Airports in chaos after air traffic control outage grounds flights across UK
Air Traffic Control Error left tens of thousands of summer holidaymakers who faced the chaos of grounded planes and suspended departures on Wednesday.
Passengers in Europe were stranded in the most intense holiday season where the aircraft were directed, some were returning to the departure cities due to a 20 -minute disruption.
Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Manchester Airports were among the airports affected by the interruptions that removed many aircraft and flight teams from the position.
Since the incoming flights returned, the departures were canceled for thousands of passengers.
In some cases, when the travelers could be released, even after the landing, no news were held on the asphalt on the asphalt.
Flights such as Marseille, Lyon, Brussels, Glasgow, Newcastle, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Berlin, Frankfurt and Basel were canceled.
Some aircraft planned to reach the UK airports had to carry out holding molds or direct them to another place.
The company said that the deduction that started immediately after 16:00 on Wednesday, the ATC provider in Hampshire, Swanwick, said that NATS fell to the “technical problem” at the control center.
Flight Analytics experts Cirium, up to 17:30 in England and 80 flights from the UK was canceled, he said.
British Airways, the harshest hits of the air, restricted the in incoming and outgoing flights of Heathrow up to 32 o’clock until 19.15 hours before the volumes return to 45 hours and creating a accumulated work.
On Wednesday evening, almost all BA flights were delayed, at least one dozen two hours or more delay delay: Chicago, New York JFK, Pittsburgh, Valencia, Prague, Nice, Edinburgh and Belfast City.
Heathrow was expected to be removed at night to allow the airlines to return their programs to normal.
But the deterioration upset passengers. John Carr from Stourbridge was worried that his brother in Norway, where his flight cancellation was the best man, would force his brother to miss the wedding.
35 -year -old Mr. Carr said: “I have a lot of courage. There are a lot of things to build a place in suitcases, because we openly fly to Norway. We need to do wedding rehearsals. Quite stressful.”
Other passengers complained that they were mixed with “terrible communication ından from their airports and airlines.
On Wednesday, even passengers were interrupted on later flights. A plane from Gran Canaria in Southend ended in Jersey, and the return to Amsterdam was canceled.
The London City airport was also badly hit, a ba flight from Glasgow returned to its start, and connections to Rotterdam, Palma and Amsterdam were canceled.
England’s largest budget airline Easyjet, in August 2023, at least 700,000 passengers caused chaos after a system deduction attacked NATS for “once again caused interruption”.
David Morgan, the chief business officer of Easyjet, said, “Today’s priority will support our customers, while we will want to understand which steps they have taken to ensure that the problems from NATS are not continuing.”
The airline canceled at least 16 flights to its main base Gatwick Airport.
The passengers were told: “We advise the travelers traveling this evening to check our flight viewer for the latest information about their flights and communicate directly with all the affected customers. This is out of our control, we are sorry for the discomfort caused by ATC failure.”
Ryanir went further and asked NATS’s General Manager Martin Rolfe to resign and claimed that no lessons were taken in two years.
For a comment, NATS was contacted.
The company said: uz We are working to safely clean up the accumulated works with affected airlines and airports. We apologize to everyone who is affected by this problem. ”
A specialist, the software gives priority to security in keeping the airspace open, he said.
Junade Ali, a man of the Institute of Engineering and Technology, said, “NATS has previously explored such events and has applied appropriate measures.
“The previous incident reports seems to have not jeopardized the safety of the software at the cost of keeping the airspace open.
“This is the right approach, because it is important to keep the airspace open, the public risk appetite demands a high security standard when it comes to air travel.”
The Transport Spokesman Department said: uz We are working closely with NATS to understand the cause of the technical problem and the effects of durability systems. ”
The liberal democrats called for an investigation into the problems. Party leader Sir Ed Davey said: “Thousands of families are preparing to take a good break, this is not good enough.
“The government must initiate an urgent investigation to ensure that the system is suitable for the purpose, including exclusion of hostile action as a reason.”
