The UK National Air Traffic Services (NATS) says it is rectifying a computer glitch that caused huge disruption to flights this weekend.

 

Flights are reported to have returned to normal today, although 40 were cancelled at Heathrow yesterday and disruption was also felt at other major UK airports, besides transfer traffic being disrupted. Thousands of passengers were delayed at London’s main airports, or had their flights cancelled altogether (mainly at Heathrow and Gatwick).

 

NATS CEO Richard Deakin apologised for the problems, blaming corrupted computer code in its systems that had to be located and fixed by sifting through some four million lines of other code.

 

The organisation is based in Swanwick in Hampshire and is currently responsible for controlling airspace – and some 5,000 flights every hour – over a vast radius of 200,000 square miles above England and Wales. This is not the first time it has had problems and the UK Civil Aviation Authority has been highly critical of the organisation in relation to past glitches.

 

Deakin commented yesterday: “The air traffic control systems used by NATS are robust and have contingency built in to them so that if a problem occurs it can be identified quickly and resolved. Our contingency plans worked as they should have done yesterday (Friday 12 December) and allowed our complex systems to be fully back up and running after 45 minutes.”

 

 

Widespread delays were caused by a computer glitch.

 

‘FAILURES’ EXTREMELY RARE….

Having said that, 45 minutes of delays in the system is all it takes to cause chaos to schedules in the crowded skies over the UK and this is exactly what happened, as Deacon acknowledged.

 

He added: “Failures like this are extremely rare, but when they occur it is because they are unique and have not been seen before. If they do occur, root causes are identified and corrections made to prevent them happening again.

 

“We have never seen a repeat occurrence once a fix has been made. Following the issue on Friday, the root cause was identified, a correction put in place and we do not expect that failure to repeat.

 

“Once the backlog in the network has been caught up over this weekend, this issue will not cause further disruption over the holiday season. We are confident in the strength of the systems and the people we use to successfully manage over two million flights every year.

 

“Safety was not compromised at any time, but we do sincerely apologise for the delays and inconvenience caused to passengers and our airport and airline customers.”