India, Sept. 8 -- London Heathrow Airport departures have partially resumed following a major air traffic control (ATC) equipment failure. The system issue began causing widespread ground stops at approximately 12:48 p.m. local time on Tuesday, 8 September 2026. While flight departures are slowly restarting through specific routes, massive knock-on delays and flight backlogs are expected to impact travel for the remainder of the afternoon and evening.

What Happened?

The National Air Traffic Services (NATS), which manages the UK's airspace, confirmed that their engineers are responding to an unexpected technical failure involving air traffic control data-processing systems and equipment.

The failure severely limited NATS' capacity to tr...