Chaos at UK airports can continue for days after service is interrupted

The problems, which arose on Monday due to a technical malfunction in the UK’s air traffic control, could “continue for several days”. Thousands of travelers en route to Britain could also face long delays on Tuesday and later in the week, according to the BBC.

Due to problems with the National Air Traffic Service (NATS), more than 500 flights were canceled on Monday. According to the BBC, about 9 percent of the more than 3,000 flights that were due to land in the UK on Monday were canceled and air traffic from Schiphol was also affected. The outage came at a bad time: due to a holiday in parts of the UK, many people were traveling by plane.

The UK’s Heathrow, Gatwick and London Luton airports reported online that travelers should also monitor the website for arrival and departure times on Tuesday. Schiphol warned of this on Monday evening, but only one of dozens of flights to London was canceled on Tuesday.

NATS reported Monday afternoon that the source of the problem had been found. Exactly what went wrong was not sharing power with the outside world.