UK Air Traffic Glitch Cancels Over 1,000 Flights, Thousands Of Passengers Stuck For Hours

An air traffic control problem disrupted travel across Britain on Tuesday, cancelling more than 1,000 flights and leaving passengers stranded for hours on airport runways and in terminals, according to flight-tracking website Flightradar24. Britain’s National Air Traffic Services chief Martin Rolfe said 'we absolutely take responsibility for this.'

Rolfe said things go wrong 'relatively infrequently' and engineers worked hard to resolve the issue. NATS said it had resolved a problem in its flight processing system in the evening, but delays rippled across 15 U.K. airports and beyond as airlines and airports worked to clear a huge backlog of delayed flights.