Airport disruption: Flights recover after Nats system failure

Airports around the UK are returning to normal, although almost 40 flights have been cancelled at Heathrow, the day after a computer failure at the national air traffic control centre.
National Air Traffic Services (Nats) said a technical fault in the flight data system at its Swanwick centre, in Hampshire, had caused the problem.

This resulted in widespread disruption at airports around the UK on Friday.

Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said the situation was "unacceptable".

The Swanwick centre was restored to "full operational capacity" by Friday afternoon, Nats said.

Heathrow Airport has warned of knock-on effects on Saturday and urged passengers to check their flight status.

It said 38 flights due to arrive or take off before 09:30 GMT had been cancelled.

A Heathrow spokesman said the flights could not be rescheduled because the airport ran at 98% capacity. He said passengers would be rebooked on other services.
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Nats managing director of operations Martin Rolfe told the BBC that the cause of the system failure was still being investigated

British Airways said there may be "some disruption" to its flights on Saturday.

It said Gatwick and London City flights were expected to operate as normal but advised all passengers to check the status of their flight before leaving for the airport.

Gatwick Airport said it would be operating a full service on Saturday although there would be "some backlog".

Many other airports are also due to run their scheduled Saturday flights on time, according to their websites.

Cause undefined
The glitch caused many delays at Heathrow and Gatwick on Friday, where departing flights were grounded for a time.

Dozens of arrivals and departures at airports across southern England, and as far north as Aberdeen and Edinburgh, were also delayed and cancelled.

Many passengers have had to stay in hotels overnight because of rescheduled flights.

The problems came a year after a telephone failure at the Hampshire control room caused huge disruption - one of a number of technical hitches to hit the part-privatised Nats since the centre opened in 2002.

Swanwick air traffic control centre


Swanwick controls the 200,000 square miles of airspace above England and Wales, cost £623m to build, and employs about 1,300 controllers.

But the facility, which handles 5,000 flights every 24 hours, has had a troubled history.

It opened in 2002, six years after its planned commissioning date - a delay which Nats said was due to problems with the software used to power its systems.

Almost a year after it opened, a senior air traffic controller raised concerns with the BBC about health and safety standards and complications with radio communications - which he said cut out erratically.

Technical problems and computer faults hit flights in 2008 and again last summer. And, in December 2013, problems with the internal telephone system then caused further delays.


Nats said on Friday evening that a "thorough investigation" was being carried out to "identify the root cause" of the disruption.

Managing director Martin Rolfe has ruled out both a computer hack and a power outage as possible causes, but says the precise cause of the problem has yet to be established.

He said the error occurred in the flight data part of the system, where flight plans are stored.

BBC correspondent Andy Moore, at Heathrow, said the issue only lasted for between 30 minutes and one hour but caused chaos because the UK's air traffic control system runs at 99% capacity, giving little scope for managing disruption.
Source: BBC