What caused the “Technical problem” which paralyzed on Monday the British air traffic, in the midst of a peak in returns from a long weekend on the occasion of a UK public holiday? The British government has announced a administrative inquiry to find out the cause.
British Transport Minister Mark Harper said yesterday on Times Radio that it was “not a cyberattack”, but “a technical fault in the flight plan system“. This forced air traffic controllers to manually enter flight plans, resulting in numerous chain delays and cancellations. Result: hundreds of flights were canceled or delayed, impacting thousands of travelers departing from or arriving in the United Kingdom. So far, the British National Air Traffic Service (NATS) has not provided more details, contenting itself with evoking a “Technical problem“.
“I don’t want to speculate on the cause of the problem. There will be a full investigation to get to the bottom of a problem of such magnitude“, underlined Mark Harper, specifying that there had been no equivalent incident”for almost a decade“. The low cost Ryanair thus warned its passengers that they could expect “extensive cancellations and delays caused by this latest, as yet unexplained, failure of NATS»
Many Brits were complaining on X (ex-Twitter) of being stranded away from home after having their flight canceled and sitting on board for hours, or after a day and a half of waiting at the airport. Many also regretted not having had a new return flight offered for several days, while their company offered them to buy a ticket to return faster but at exorbitant prices.
