Over 150 Flights Canceled After UK Air Traffic Control Glitch
Over 150 flights were canceled, along with many others delayed—affecting hundreds of thousands of passengers—due to a technical failure in the UK’s air traffic control system that caused a temporary halt in takeoffs and landings yesterday at all major airports in the United Kingdom, right in the middle of the summer holiday season, CE Report quotes ANSA.
The organization responsible for air traffic control (NATS), which has come under fire for this latest in a series of malfunctions, confirmed that the chaos in the skies was caused by an internal software glitch, not a cyber-attack. It took 20 minutes to resolve the issue by switching to a backup system, allowing full operations to resume within an hour.
However, the impact was widespread—both within the UK and at international airports—and expected to last for hours, with operations only gradually returning to normal this morning.
In response to harsh criticism from airlines, starting with Ryanair, UK Transport Minister Heidi Alexander summoned NATS head Martin Rolfe to explain how such incidents can be prevented in the future.
A Ryanair executive, Neal McMahon, called for Rolfe’s resignation yesterday, noting that a similar nationwide flight disruption occurred just two years ago and not enough has been done since to prevent it from happening again.
