The nature of the “technical issue” that caused major travel chaos on Wednesday in the UK has emerged. An air traffic control outage on the afternoon of July 30 prompted chaos in several airports across the country.
The NATS, which control the UK airspace, resolved the issue within the hour, but didn’t share the cause behind it. This morning, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said the incident was an “isolated event and there is no evidence of malign activity”. Now, sources claimed the air traffic control systems failed because of a radar system “software glitch”.
A source told The Times: “This was a genuine software error and the back-up systems worked as they should. They run a different program, so there is no chance of the same issue happening twice.”
The software relaying information to air traffic controllers’ screens crashed, the sources also claimed, which resulted in air traffic controllers having an incomplete picture of planes in the air.
The decision to enforce restrictions by NATS was taken with safety in mind.
While the issue was resolved quickly, the temporary restrictions on flights are expected to have an impact on air travel for days.
Some 150 flights were cancelled yesterday, with planes being grounded at Heathrow, Gatwick, Birmingham Airport, Edinburgh and other air hubs.