The British air traffic control system on Monday suffered a 'network-wide failure' that could result in flights getting delayed amid a busy day for air travel following a holiday weekend. The technical issue has been "identified and remedied" but thousands of passengers were left stranded as hundreds of flights of cancellations will continue in this week.
"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," said the National Air Traffic Service (NATS).
The NATS earlier said that it had “applied traffic flow restrictions to maintain safety". It explained that 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 ensuring every flight in the UK remains safe and doing everything we can to minimise the impact. We are sincerely sorry for the disruption this is causing," it added. The NATS is UK's leading provider of air traffic control services, handling 2.5 million flights and 250 million passengers in a "normal year".
An estimated 500 flights are believed to have been cancelled as a result of the technical glitch, which will continue to cause chaos at UK airports for some days.
"The technical issue which limited UK air traffic earlier today has been fixed by NATS. However, schedules will remain significantly disrupted for the rest of the day. We ask passengers to only travel to the airport if their flight is confirmed as still operating,” said the Heathrow Airport.
Several airports across the UK, and airlines including Ryanair, EasyJet, Wizz Air, Loganair and Aer Lingus have all warned passengers of delays or cancellations to flights.
"There has been a network-wide failure of UK air traffic control computer systems this morning. Although we are hopeful of being able to operate most intra-Scotland flights on the basis of local coordination and with a minimum of disruption, north-south and international flights maybe subject to delays. If you are flying with us today, please check our website for the latest information about your flight before setting off for the airport," said Scottish airline Loganair.
British Airways said it was working with the NATS to "understand the impact" of the issue, BBC reported. Another airline EasyJet told a BBC journalist that the air traffic control issue was "currently affecting all flights due to fly into or out of United Kingdom airspace". "We are working with the relevant authorities to understand the impact of this issue and the timescale for normal operations to resume," it said.
Many people are returning from their long weekend trips abroad, marking today as one of the busiest days in Britain. The London Gatwick airport is one of the most busiest single runway airports in the world.
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