UK air traffic control outage caused by software defect, says operator
The glitch triggered backup protocols and manual flight handovers, with airlines saying the disruption cost them millions of pounds.
- On Friday, the National Air Traffic Services revealed a software defect in its flight data system caused the September 8 outage, grounding more than 2,000 flights and affecting 300,000 passengers across UK airports.
- The flaw occurred when a manual request for an aircraft identification code was paused for a higher-priority task, causing corrupted data 'in the space of a millisecond,' Nats said.
- Stranded passenger Addie Kitson, 26, faced almost £100 in unexpected costs after her flight was diverted to Stockholm, spending 19 hours at the airport.
- Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander described the disruption as 'completely unacceptable,' ordering the Civil Aviation Authority to launch an independent review due within six months.
- Nats CEO Martin Rolfe apologized to affected passengers, stating "it's our job to get people where they want to go, quickly and without delay," as a permanent software fix is safety tested and deployed.
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Software Snag Caused Air Travel Chaos: UK Agency
A preliminary report released Friday blank a software defect for the cancellation of over 2,000 flights in and out of the United Kingdom last week. NATS, formally known as National Air Traffic Services, said the glitch on Sept. 8 was behind the Mayhem at British airports and beyond, further...
The cancellation of thousands of flights last week in the UK was not caused by a "military operation", but by a software problem, shows a preliminary investigation, according to The Guardian and Sky News. A software problem in part of the UK air traffic control system has corrupted flight data...
The British National Air Traffic Control Service (NATS) stated on Friday that the airport malfunction had occurred earlier in September due to a software error (MS) in the system, rather than external interference.
2,000 UK flight cancellations caused by ‘previously unknown defect’ that happened in the ‘space of a millisecond’ — travel chaos took days to fix and left hundreds of thousands stranded
A report from Nats found that the disruption stemmed from a manual request for a squawk code that was corrupted during processing.
NATS, a company responsible for the control of British air traffic, reported on Friday (18) that an interruption that affected hundreds of thousands of passengers last week was caused by a software failure. NATS's director-president, Martin Rolfe, said that the paralysis was not related to a problem that occurred in 2023, which also caused widespread disruptions, nor a military intervention, as reported by some communications vehicles last week.…
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