Israel Airports Authority: Serious delays in flights to and from UK

A British Airways flight taking off from Ben Gurion International Airport, September 3, 2014. (Moshe Shai/Flash90)
A British Airways flight taking off from Ben Gurion International Airport, September 3, 2014. (Moshe Shai/Flash90)

The Airports Authority announces that there will be severe delays in flights from Ben Gurion airport to the UK and on flights coming into Israel after Britain’s air traffic control system was hit by a breakdown that slowed takeoffs and landings across the UK.

The Authority urges passengers to check with their airlines before heading to the airport.

UK flight control operator National Air Traffic Services says it was experiencing an unexplained “technical issue” that could delay flights today, the end of a holiday weekend and one of the busiest travel days of the year.

The service says it had “applied traffic flow restrictions to maintain safety” and that engineers were working to find and fix the fault. It says UK airspace remained open.

It does not give an estimate of how long it would take to fix the problem, or what had caused it, but European air traffic authority Eurocontrol warns of “very high” delays because of a “flight data processing system failure” in the UK.

AP contributed to this report

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