The air traffic control fault disrupting flights at Bristol Airport since Tuesday afternoon is continuing into the evening, with NATS warning that recovery will take longer than first expected even though engineers have fixed the underlying technical problem.
Bristol Airport's own departures board showed at least 7 cancellations and further delays as of early evening, on top of the disruption already reported earlier in the day, as the knock-on effects of the national fault kept rippling through the schedule.
According to the Evening Standard, NATS said the fault was in its flight processing system at the Swanwick control centre in Hampshire, which manages air traffic across southern England. NATS confirmed a fix was implemented at around 4.40pm, but said the system was only "starting to recover" and that restoring normal operations would take some time, urging passengers to keep checking with their airline.
The scale of the disruption has grown well beyond the original afternoon delays. IBTimes UK reported that more than 400 UK flights had been cancelled by the evening, with Flightradar24 putting the figure at 425 cancellations by 5pm and rising. The Mirror reported the toll had climbed further still, with more than 600 departing flights cancelled from at least 16 UK airports by early evening, including Bristol, Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Belfast. Both outlets confirmed Bristol among the airports affected by the fault, alongside the London airports where the disruption has been most severe.