Edinburgh Airport chief calls repeated NATS outage a major disappointment

Gordon Dewar, chief executive of Edinburgh Airport, described the recent NATS connectivity failure as "incredibly disappointing" and highlighted that it is the second such incident in weeks, disrupting flights in Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England. He said the recurring outage reveals a lack of robustness in a critical national service and urged reforms. Dewar added that cancellations create cascading effects on aircraft positioning and may affect future schedules, while the airport is working to assist delayed passengers and help airlines resume normal operations.

First Minister John Swinney visited the airport, lamented the disruption and said officials will engage with NATS and the government to ensure the system can withstand future issues. NATS confirmed that airports south of Manchester were mostly unaffected, apologized for the inconvenience, and clarified that this incident is unrelated to the problem two weeks earlier.