Software defect grounds over two thousand UK flights

A software fault in the UK's air traffic control system cancelled more than 2,000 flights on 8 September 2026. Hundreds of thousands of passengers were stranded on runways or inside terminals for hours. The problem happened in a millisecond and damaged data that controllers use to track flights on radar. NATS, the company that runs UK air traffic control, took several days to fully restore the system. A preliminary report confirmed that a software defect caused the outage, ruling out human error. Some people have called for NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign. This was not the first time NATS has had serious operational problems, and the incident has raised fresh concerns about how reliable the system really is.