The UK’s air traffic control chaos caused by a major software bug is expected to last for days rather than hours.
Flights have been grounded across English and Welsh airspace after an issue was discovered in a system used to manage flights and their routes yesterday afternoon. This has left hundreds of flights cancelled, thousands of passengers stranded, and flights in and out of the UK in chaos.
National Air Traffic Services (NATS) said it had found a software bug which had caused it to enter “a contingency configuration”, which affected the entire network. The initial issue was discovered at around 2pm yesterday and operations were suspended until further notice.
NATS has said it expects the disruption to last for days rather than hours as it works to both fix the bug and then work through the backlog of flight traffic caused by the incident. It has said that flights are unlikely to be operating normally before Monday and apologised for the disruption that it had caused.
The issue has left passengers stranded and disrupted operations across the UK and Airports Council International Europe has said that it recognised how frustrating the experience can be, and urged affected passengers to contact their airlines for updates and individual assistance.
