Radar 'technical issue' halts flights to Birmingham Airport

A power outage, caused by bad weather, at a National Air Traffic Service's (NATS) radar site halted arrivals to Birmingham Airport overnight.

Over 20 flights bound for the airport were cancelled, diverted or delayed - with several flights suffering delays of over four hours. The radar which serves Birmingham Airport was restored shortly before 1.30am on Monday.

NATS apologised for the disruption and said it was working closely with the airport as it resumed its air traffic service. Engineers from NATS worked with National Grid to resolve the issue, with National Grid saying it responded "to a power cut in Shropshire".

The technical issue with the NATS radar that serves Birmingham Airport had meant that only departing flights were being allowed to operate. Birmingham Airport also apologised for the disruption.

Multiple flights were diverted to East Midlands Airport and Liverpool's John Lennon Airport - one flight from Amsterdam was airborne for almost an hour, only to return to Amsterdam. Previous incidents This isn't the first time a power issue has caused problems for a major UK airport.

Last March, a power outage shut Heathrow Airport, causing travel chaos for more than 270,000 passengers. A report found that the incident, which led to the cancellation of around 1,300 flights, was caused by a "catastrophic failure" of equipment in a nearby substation.

NATS also came under fire last year, particularly from airlines, when air traffic problems resulted in more than 1,000 flights departing UK airports being cancelled. Martin Rolfe, the chief executive of NATS, told Sky News an initial investigation found the air traffic control failure was caused by flight data which its system "didn't understand" and "couldn't interpret"..