London: Thousands of passengers were stranded on the tarmac all over the UK and abroad on Monday after planes taking off or landing in the country (Britain) were grounded due to a technical issue that had hit British air traffic control systems.
According to the UK’s National Air Traffic Services (NATS), the air traffic regulator had to apply flight restrictions to maintain safety across its airports. They did not provide any further information about what caused it or how long it would take to fix.
The disruption comes on one of the busiest travel days of the year-with many people returning from holidays on the last Bank Holiday weekend of the summer. “A technical issue was affecting its ability to automatically process flight plans and they were working to solve the issue as quickly as possible,” NATS stated.
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Reports said that over 500 flights had to be cancelled due to the technical snag in the electronic system. “Until our engineers have resolved this, flight plans are being input manually which means we cannot process them at the same volume, hence we have applied traffic flow restrictions. Our technical experts are looking at all possible solutions to rectify this as quickly as possible,” it said.
The airport authorities said that their priority was to ensure that every flight in the UK remains safe and hence they were doing everything to minimise the impact. “We are sincerely sorry for the disruption this is causing.”
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The NATS describes itself as the country’s leading provider of air traffic control services, which handles 2.5 million flights and 250 million passengers in a “normal year”. It said that flight plans were being put in manually, which meant that a limited number of plans could be processed at a time. “Our technical experts are looking at all possible solutions to rectify this as quickly as possible,” it said.
Earlier, it said engineers are working to find (the technical issue) and fix the fault. “We are continuing to work hard to resolve the technical issue. To clarify, UK airspace is not closed, had to apply air traffic flow restrictions which ensures we can maintain safety,” it later updated.
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Other airlines are also asking customers to check for updates. Scottish airline Loganair was the first to report a “network-wide failure of UK air traffic control systems this morning. Several airports across the UK, and airlines including Ryanair, EasyJet, Wizz Air, Loganair and Aer Lingus have all warned passengers of delays or cancellations to flights, BBC reported.
Spokespersons for London Luton, Stansted, Heathrow and Gatwick airports all said they wel experiencing issues, and urged customers to contact their airlines, it added.
Liverpool John Lennon Airport said “some flights might be subject to a delay”, while Edinburgh Airport urged passengers to check with their airline before going to the airport. Irish minister of state for transport Jack Chambers warned of a “major knock-on impact on flights to and from Ireland as a consequence of the issues in the UK.
