Bristol Airport was one of several UK airports hit by delays on Tuesday afternoon, 8 September, after a technical fault struck the country's air traffic control provider, NATS.
The problem originated in NATS's flight processing system at its Swanwick control centre in Hampshire, which manages air traffic across southern England. In a statement, NATS said: "We have a technical problem at NATS Swanwick air traffic control centre which is causing some disruption to flight departures. Our engineers are on site investigating and we will provide an update as soon as we can."
Bristol was named alongside Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Manchester, East Midlands, Birmingham, London City, Stansted, Gatwick and Heathrow as an airport affected by the fault, according to Flightradar24 data reported by LBC. The disruption was most severe at Heathrow and Gatwick, where departures were paused outright for periods during the afternoon, but the wider air traffic restrictions rippled out across the network, including at Bristol.
Flightradar24 said Eurocontrol was listing 8pm as the expected return to normal traffic in the affected airspace, though NATS has not given its own timeframe and said updates would be posted at www.nats.aero and on X.
Bristol Airport's own departures board was already showing delays on some routes on Tuesday afternoon, consistent with the wider network-wide restrictions rather than a fault local to the airport. Arrivals into affected airports, including Heathrow, continued largely as normal, according to the BBC, with the disruption concentrated on outbound flights.