Flights delay in uk airports

The BBC's John Hunt reports from Heathrow where his flight to Berlin has been delayed
Flights are being delayed across the UK and Ireland because of an air traffic control centre fault.

Affected airports include Heathrow, Stansted, Cardiff, Dublin, and Glasgow.

The National Air Traffic Control Service (Nats) said its Swanwick centre, in Hampshire, was having "difficulty switching from night time to daytime operation".

It said the problem will not be fixed until between 1800 GMT and 1900 GMT with delays likely to continue beyond.

Operations director Juliet Kennedy told the BBC she did not think the problem had happened before.

BBC transport correspondent Richard Westcott said Nats' internal phone system had broken down, which "meant controllers in the same room as each other couldn't pass on important data to each other".

He said it was a totally different issue to the software problem Nats suffered earlier this summer.

At midday, air traffic controllers had dealt with 1,700 flights rather than the usual 2,000 on a normal Saturday.

Heathrow had cancelled 60 flights by 09:45 GMT, with these split between arrivals and departures.

Belfast, Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham, Southampton, Luton, London City, Newcastle, Exeter and Bournemouth are among other airports that have reported delays, asking passengers to check with their airlines.

Stansted Airport said flights were subject to delays, while Gatwick said 20% of its departures had been delayed, with passengers being warned they may have to wait for "a couple of hours".

In other developments:

• Ryanair has warned there will be "significant flight delays and possible cancellations"

• British Airways said the technical problems had already led to flight cancellations and warned that they "will cause delays to some flights"

• EasyJet said though the majority of the morning flights had departed, "severe delays" and possible cancellations could be expected later