A second technical failure at the UK's air traffic control provider within two weeks has caused widespread flight disruption, prompting sharp criticism from airlines and calls for leadership changes at National Air Traffic Services (Nats).

A connectivity issue at Nats's Prestwick centre in Ayrshire disrupted airports across Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England, delaying more than 200 flights. Preliminary data from aviation analytics company Cirium found at least 117 departing flights and 110 arrivals were cancelled.

Nats said the underlying issue had since been resolved and that it was running at "full capacity," though officials warned of knock-on effects. A spokesperson said the organisation was "focused on working with our customers to recover their residual delays and help get their operations back to normal."

Nats stated the Prestwick connectivity issue had "nothing to do" with a separate software defect at its Swanwick centre that led to the cancellation of approximately 2,000 flights earlier in September.

EasyJet was the worst-affected airline, with 47 of its 670 scheduled departures cancelled. British Airways saw 12 cancellations from its 513 scheduled departures. Ryanair said the outage affected 140 of its flights and 25,000 of its passengers.

EasyJet said Monday's incident "once again calls into question the resilience" of how the service works. Wizz Air described the situation as a "national confidence crisis" in Nats.

Wizz Air UK managing director Yvonne Moynihan called for "urgent reform" of Nats and said she did not have confidence in its current leadership. When asked whether Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe should resign, Moynihan said: "We need to look at the leadership at the top. But more than that, what are the board of directors doing?"

Ryanair reiterated its calls for Rolfe to resign, saying he had "failed to deliver either a reliable system or an effective back-up." Jet2 boss Steve Heapy called for "urgent and accountable" action to strengthen the UK's air traffic control infrastructure.

British Airways said "yet another technical fault with Nats" was "disappointing." Industry body Airlines UK said both passengers and airlines "deserve better" service after "yet another Nats failure."

A Nats spokesperson apologised for the disruption, saying: "In the real world, we accept technology can and sometimes does fail. Our job is minimising disruption where possible. What isn't acceptable is any incident where safety is compromised - this is always our first priority."

The UK Civil Aviation Authority said passengers whose flights were disrupted were "unlikely" to be entitled to compensation. It said the technical issue is "likely to be considered the result of 'extraordinary circumstances' under passenger rights rules," meaning that "although passengers should be looked after by airlines, they are unlikely to be entitled to compensation for delays or cancellations that were directly caused by the incident."

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander acknowledged the problems were "deeply frustrating" for passengers.

Among those affected was Steve Davies, 74, who said he was "cheesed off with air traffic control" as technical issues seemed to be "happening a lot." He and his wife Sadie were stuck at Birmingham Airport after being told to disembark their EasyJet flight to Edinburgh.

Nicole McCloskey, from Kilmarnock, had been due to travel to Disneyland Paris with her family when their flight was cancelled. Her family received a message indicating a delay while travelling to Glasgow Airport, but only learned the flight had been grounded altogether upon arrival. She said they had been rebooked on a later flight and were hopeful "it's sorted in time."

Rebecca Freeman was stranded at Bristol Airport after her flight to Edinburgh for a business meeting was cancelled. She described the atmosphere as "chaos." "I was caught up in the Nats issue earlier this month and spent nine hours at Bristol airport," she said. "I can't believe it's happened again. It is very frustrating and I will have to attempt the business meeting again for a third time."