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Edinburgh Airport Reopens After Hour-Long Air Traffic IT Outage — Flights Delayed, Some Diverted

06:44 PM, 12/05/2025
Edinburgh Airport Reopens After Hour-Long Air Traffic IT Outage — Flights Delayed, Some Diverted

An IT fault at Edinburgh Airport's air traffic control provider closed the runway for about an hour, grounding and disrupting domestic and international flights. Major carriers including British Airways, EasyJet, Ryanair, United and Delta were affected, and a Delta flight from New York diverted to Dublin. Operations resumed around 10:40 a.m., but recovery took several hours as aircraft and crews were out of position. The outage was localised to Air Navigation Solutions and was not linked to the larger Cloudflare incident.

Edinburgh Airport Reopens After Localised Air Traffic IT Fault

Flights began taking off and landing again at Edinburgh Airport after an IT fault affecting the airport's air traffic control provider forced the runway to close for about an hour on Friday morning. The airport said the issue was localised to its provider and unrelated to a separate Cloudflare outage that disrupted websites and apps.

The glitch caused cancellations, diversions and delays for both domestic and international services to and from destinations including London, Birmingham, Belfast, Amsterdam and Frankfurt. Major carriers affected included British Airways, EasyJet and Ryanair, and transatlantic services from United and Delta were also disrupted — a Delta flight from New York was diverted to Dublin.

Some passengers reported their aircraft were held on the tarmac for up to two hours. Although runway operations resumed at around 10:40 a.m. local time, recovery took several hours as backlogs built up and aircraft and crews ended up out of position, prolonging knock-on delays.

What Officials Said

In an online statement, Edinburgh Airport thanked passengers "for their patience and understanding" and confirmed the problem involved its provider of air traffic control services. The BBC reported the affected company was Air Navigation Solutions (ANS), based at Gatwick, rather than National Air Traffic Services (NATS), which manages most U.K. airspace — meaning the outage remained localised.

Safety is our number one priority, and our engineers worked at pace to restore system capability as quickly as possible.

An ANS spokesman provided that statement, and NATS pledged to assist airlines and support recovery efforts where needed.

Context

Edinburgh Airport handles roughly 43,000 passengers daily and serves about 155 destinations. The airport was among many affected by a CrowdStrike-related outage in July 2024 that caused widespread travel disruption.

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