Flights have been cancelled and delayed at Norwich Airport after UK airspace was hit by an air traffic control fault. 

A fault with the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) system, the country’s leading provider of air traffic control services, has caused significant delays at UK airports.

The 3.40pm arrival of a Tui flight from Dalaman to Norwich Airport was delayed until 4.20pm. 

The 4.50pm arrival from Amsterdam and the 5.20pm departure to the Dutch airport were both cancelled by provider KLM.

The only other scheduled flight on bank holiday Monday is a 10.30pm KLM service from Amsterdam.

Airlines including Tui and Loganair, both of which fly out of Norwich, were urging passengers to check for the latest information before travelling.

However, an update shortly before 4pm from transport secretary Mark Harper said the “technical issue” affecting NATS had been resolved.

On a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, he said that he and aviation minister Charlotte Vere were “continuing to work with NATS to help them manage affected flights and support passengers”.

“All passengers should still contact their airline for specific flight information.”

In a statement, NATS explained: “We have identified and remedied the technical issue affecting our flight planning system this morning.

“We are now working closely with airlines and airports to manage the flights affected as efficiently as possible. Our engineers will be carefully monitoring the system’s performance as we return to normal operations.

“The flight planning issue affected the system’s ability to automatically process flight plans, meaning that flight plans had to be processed manually which cannot be done at the same volume, hence the requirement for traffic flow restrictions.

“Our priority is always to ensure that every flight in the UK remains safe and we are sincerely sorry for the disruption this is causing."