• Saturday, May 04, 2024
businessday logo

BusinessDay

Flights into Nigeria unaffected as technical glitch grounds planes in UK

Flights to Israel from Nigeria undisrupted despite war

Flights in and out of Nigeria from UK has remained unaffected by the technical issue that hit British air traffic control systems, grounding several planes.

Findings by BusinessDay show that Virgin landed early Tuesday morning and British Airways landed early on Monday evening.

British Airways flights has already left and is estimated to arrive early this evening as well.

Thousands of passengers were stuck on the tarmac all over the UK and abroad on Monday after planes leaving and flying to Britain were grounded.

The UK’s National Air Traffic Services (NATS) said it had “applied traffic flow restrictions to maintain safety” across its airports. They did not provide any further information about what caused it or how long it would take to fix. The disruption comes on one of the busiest travel days of the year — with many people returning from holidays on the last bank holiday weekend of the summer.

Read also: Nigerian airlines lament limited access to choice airports on international routes

NATS said a technical issue was affecting its “ability to automatically process flight plans” and they were working to solve the issue “as quickly as possible”.

“Our technical experts are looking at all possible solutions to rectify this as quickly as possible,” it said.

The NATS describes itself as the country’s leading provider of air traffic control services, which handles 2.5 million flights and 250 million passengers in a “normal year”.

British Airways said it was working with NATS to “understand the impact” of the issue, and said it will keep customers updated. Other airlines are also asking customers to check for updates.

Jack Chambers, Irish minister of state for transport warned of a “major” knock-on impact on flights to and from Ireland as a consequence of the issues in the United Kingdom.