On Monday, the British air traffic control service suffered a technical problem that caused the cancellation of more than 200 flights due to depart from Great Britain and 271 others scheduled to arrive in the country.
According to data from the aeronautical analysis company Cirium, even after it was fixed (hours later), the failure affected the entire network of air traffic control computer systems in the United Kingdom and would still cause a delay of more than eight hours to other flights at various airports in the region.
Flights could not be processed automatically
According to a statement issued by the British National Air Traffic Service (NATS), the mysterious technical problem affected the British air traffic control service's ability to automatically process flight plans. This meant that airport professionals had to manually enter information for each flight.
Inevitably, the resulting delay to flights eventually led to the cancellation of the vast majority of flights. For security reasons, NATS restricted the number of flights, but British airspace was not closed. By 3 p.m. in the U.K., it was stated that the engineers responsible had resolved the problem, but air traffic was still disrupted.
"We have identified and resolved the technical issue affecting our flight planning system this morning. We are now working closely with airlines and airports to manage the affected flights as efficiently as possible. Our engineers will be closely monitoring the operation of the system as we return to normal," NATS said in a statement.
British Transport Minister Mark Harper is working with NATS to help them manage the affected flights and support passengers.
The vacation did not go as expected
The technical problem that affected UK airports didn't exactly have a good time to occur, but it seems it "chose" one of the worst. This weekend and Monday have marked a particularly busy period for travel. This is because today is a public holiday in Britain, as well as being the last weekend before back-to-school.
According to Cirium, the three-day national holiday weekend was expected to see a 10% increase in the number of flights compared to last year.
Throughout the day today, several passengers have reported having to wait for hours at UK airports and even being prevented from taking off inside planes on the tarmac. So far, airlines are offering affected passengers the chance to rebook cancelled flights or receive a full refund. The measures, however, vary from airline to airline.
You can read:
Leave a Reply
You can also Read: