Military aircraft reportedly blamed for UK air traffic control outage
Meltdown that grounded thousands of flights caused by ‘spurious’ flight data being entered into system, report says
TL;DR
- A UK military aircraft allegedly caused a widespread air traffic control outage by inputting "spurious" flight data into the National Air Traffic Services (Nats) system.
- The outage on Tuesday grounded over 2,000 flights and affected hundreds of thousands of passengers.
- Nats operations managers informed airports and airlines that there was no dedicated backup for the flight processing system due to a system overhaul and high duplication costs.
- The chief executive of Nats, Martin Rolfe, met with the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, who commissioned an independent review by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
- Rolfe ruled out a cyber-attack, suggesting the incident was unprecedented in Nats' 50-year history.
- Airline executives, including Ryanair's CEO Michael O'Leary, have called for Rolfe's resignation.
- Passengers affected by the delays are unlikely to receive compensation due to "extraordinary circumstances."
- The Ministry of Defence stated there was no indication of wrongdoing on the part of the military.