Watch: Heathrow Airport after air traffic control outage grounds flights

Watch a view of Heathrow airport as airlines attempted to recover their flight operations after an air traffic control (ATC) fault caused major disruption on Wednesday afternoon (30 July).

The disruption, which began just after 4pm on Wednesday, was down to a “technical issue” at the control centre of ATC provider Nats in Swanwick, Hampshire, the company said.

The fault left tens of thousands of summer holidaymakers facing the chaos of grounded planes and suspended take-offs.

Passengers across Europe were stranded during the peak holiday season when planes were diverted, some turning around mid-air to return to their departure cities because of a 20-minute glitch.

Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Manchester Airports were all among the airports hit by the outage that left many aircraft and flight crew out of position.

Flights to destinations including Marseille, Lyon, Brussels, Glasgow, Newcastle, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Berlin, Frankfurt and Basel were cancelled.

Read more about the air traffic control fault disruptions in our live coverage.