Air traffic in Great Britain was massively disrupted for two days. Now the air traffic control NATS wants to have found the cause of the technical problems: Incoming flight data would have paralyzed the systems.
According to air traffic control, the massive problems in British air traffic with hundreds of canceled flights were probably triggered by incoming flight data. “Initial investigation into the issue indicates that it is related to some of the flight data we have received,” National Air Traffic Services (NATS) said.
As a result, all systems would have interrupted the automatic data processing to prevent incorrect information from being accidentally transmitted to the air traffic controllers. “There is no evidence that it was a cyber attack,” emphasized NATS boss Martin Rolfe.
Tens of thousands of passengers were stuck
Rolfe described the incident as “extremely rare”. He is certain that the problem will not occur again. “We understand the way the system failed,” Rolfe said. “As a result, we have already implemented measures to ensure that if the problem recurs, we can fix it very, very quickly.”
Hundreds of flights had been canceled since the beginning of the week due to a technical failure at NATS. There were massive delays. The hubs London Heathrow and Gatwick Airport were particularly affected. As the BBC reported on Monday, citing the aeronautical analysis company Cirium, a good 270 landings and more than 230 take-offs were canceled.
Nearly 300 services were canceled at major UK airports on Tuesday, according to the PA news agency. Tens of thousands of passengers across Europe were stuck at airports or in planes for hours.
Government orders investigation
The air traffic control agency NATS then said that the failure had affected the ability to process flight plans automatically. As a result, plans would have taken hours to be entered manually, causing a significant slowdown and meaning fewer planes could take off and land.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper said yesterday it was the biggest breakdown of its kind in almost a decade. He also ruled out a cyber attack as the cause of the collapse. He ordered an investigation.