{"id":690173,"date":"2026-01-12T02:56:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T02:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/690173\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T02:56:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T02:56:14","slug":"radar-technical-issue-halts-flights-to-birmingham-airport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/690173\/","title":{"rendered":"Radar &#8216;technical issue&#8217; halts flights to Birmingham Airport"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aiir-c-news-figure__image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/skynews-birmingham-airport_7133022.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"aiir-c-news-article__abstract\">\n            A power outage, caused by bad weather, at a National Air Traffic Service&#8217;s (NATS) radar site halted arrivals to Birmingham Airport overnight.\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"first\">Over 20 flights bound for the airport were cancelled, diverted or delayed overnight &#8211; with several flights suffering delays of over four hours.<\/p>\n<p>The radar which serves Birmingham Airport was restored shortly before 1.30am on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>NATS apologised for the disruption and said they were working closely with the airport as they resume their air traffic service .<\/p>\n<p>Engineers from NATS worked with National Grid to resolve the issue, with National Grid saying it responded &#8220;to a power cut in Shropshire&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The technical issue with the NATS radar that serves <strong>Birmingham<\/strong> Airport, had meant that only departing flights were being allowed to operate.<\/p>\n<p>Birmingham Airport also apologised for the disruption.<\/p>\n<p>Multiple flights were diverted to East Midlands Airport and Liverpool&#8217;s John Lennon Airport &#8211; one flight from Amsterdam was airborne for almost an hour, only to return to Amsterdam.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Previous incidents<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This isn&#8217;t the first time a power issue has caused problems for a major UK airport.<\/p>\n<p>Last March, a power outage <strong>shut Heathrow Airport<\/strong>, causing travel chaos for more than 270,000 passengers.<\/p>\n<p>A report found that the incident, which led to the cancellation of around 1,300 flights, was caused by a &#8220;catastrophic failure&#8221; of equipment in a nearby substation.<\/p>\n<p>NATS also came under fire last year, particularly from airlines, when air traffic problems resulted in <strong>more than 1,000 flights<\/strong> departing UK airports being cancelled.<\/p>\n<p>Martin Rolfe, the chief executive of NATS, told Sky News an initial investigation found the air traffic control failure was caused by flight data which its system &#8220;didn&#8217;t understand&#8221; and &#8220;couldn&#8217;t interpret&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>\n                    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/skynews_2018-small.png\" alt=\"Sky News\" style=\"width:85px;height:20px;vertical-align:middle;\"\/>\n                <\/p>\n<p>\n                (c) Sky News 2026: <a href=\"https:\/\/news.sky.com\/story\/technical-issue-with-radar-halts-arrivals-at-birmingham-airport-13493244\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Radar &#8216;technical issue&#8217; halts flights to Birmingham Airport<\/a>\n            <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A power outage, caused by bad weather, at a National Air Traffic Service&#8217;s (NATS) radar site halted arrivals&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":690043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,19000,19007,19024,748,19003,19010,19026,393,920,19001,19023,4884,19002,19009,19025,16785,19004,19011,19027,9440,19015,19017,19014,19016,19018,19012,19013,18998,19008,19005,19021,16,15,8423,18999,19006,19022,19019,19020],"class_list":{"0":"post-690173","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-bridlington","10":"tag-bridlington-news","11":"tag-bridlington-weather","12":"tag-britain","13":"tag-driffield","14":"tag-driffield-news","15":"tag-driffield-weather","16":"tag-england","17":"tag-events","18":"tag-filey","19":"tag-filey-weather","20":"tag-great-britain","21":"tag-hornsea","22":"tag-hornsea-news","23":"tag-hornsea-weather","24":"tag-local-radio","25":"tag-pickering","26":"tag-pickering-news","27":"tag-pickering-weather","28":"tag-radio","29":"tag-radio-bridlington","30":"tag-radio-driffield","31":"tag-radio-filey","32":"tag-radio-hornsea","33":"tag-radio-pickering","34":"tag-radio-scarborough","35":"tag-radio-whitby","36":"tag-scarborough","37":"tag-scarborough-evening-news","38":"tag-scarborough-news","39":"tag-scarborough-weather","40":"tag-uk","41":"tag-united-kingdom","42":"tag-whats-on","43":"tag-whitby","44":"tag-whitby-news","45":"tag-whitby-weather","46":"tag-yorkshire-coast","47":"tag-yorkshire-coast-radio"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=690173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/690043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}