Explanation for UK flights chaos is ‘a global embarrassment’

The reason behind the UK air site visitors management failure that precipitated chaos for aircraft passengers has been labelled an ‘worldwide embarrassment’.

It has now been reported that the failure, which led to a spate of flight cancellations, was brought on by a single piece of corrupted flight information acquired by National Air Traffic Services (Nats) from an airline. 1 / 4 of flights at UK airports had been cancelled through the incident.

Paul Charles, a journey marketing consultant, advised a nationwide newspaper: “It is an international embarrassment that our whole air traffic system collapsed because of one flight plan. Without a doubt it’s one rogue file that came in and caused the whole system to freeze up.”

Analysis of flight data websites by the PA news agency shows at least 281 flights – including departures and arrivals – were cancelled on Tuesday at the UK’s six busiest airports. This consisted of 75 at Gatwick, 74 at Heathrow, 63 at Manchester, 28 at Stansted, 23 at Luton and 18 at Edinburgh.

Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe has confirmed that the incident was caused by flight data received by National Air Traffic Services (Nats), with both primary and back-up systems responding by suspending automatic processing. However, he said there are no indications that the failure was caused by a cyber-attack, in a statement released on Tuesday.

Rolfe also wanted to “reassure” people that all Nats systems have been running normally since Monday afternoon to support airline and airport operations.

He said: “Very occasionally technical issues occur that are complex and take longer to resolve. In the event of such an issue our systems are designed to isolate the problem and prioritise continued safe air traffic control. This is what happened yesterday.

“At no level was UK airspace closed however the variety of flights was considerably lowered. Initial investigations into the issue present it pertains to a few of the flight information we acquired.

“Our programs, each main and the back-ups, responded by suspending computerized processing to make sure that no incorrect safety-related info may very well be introduced to an air site visitors controller or affect the remainder of the air site visitors system. There are not any indications that this was a cyber-attack.

“We have well-established procedures, overseen by the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority), to analyze incidents. We are already working carefully with them to offer a preliminary report back to the Secretary of State for Transport on Monday. The conclusions of this report will probably be made public.”

However, The Telegraph reports that the flight information that precipitated the failure associated to a single piece of corrupt information from one airline. The Prime Minister’s official spokesman has refused to rule out ideas {that a} flight plan by a French provider might have corrupted the system.

Paul Charles, a journey marketing consultant, advised the newspaper “rogue information caused the outage”. He mentioned: “One specific flight plan, whoever it was from, corrupted the entire system”.

“Wherever it is from, it is an international embarrassment that our whole air traffic system collapsed because of one flight plan. Without a doubt it’s one rogue file that came in and caused the whole system to freeze up.”

The Telegraph mentioned it had confirmed with air site visitors management sources {that a} single piece of knowledge was liable for the outage.