London. Britain’s air traffic control chief has said “incorrect” flight data was the cause of mass disruption, leaving thousands of passengers stranded at airports and on planes, as hundreds of flights to and from the country were cancelled. Its effect continued on Wednesday as well. Martin Rolfe, chief executive of National Air Traffic Services (NATS), which faced a “technical issue” related to the chaos on Monday, said an initial investigation found the failure in question was the result of erroneous flight data that could not be interpreted by the system. Could.
He also reiterated the government’s previous statement that it was not due to a cyber attack. “Initial investigation of the problem suggests it is related to some flight data we received,” Rolfe said. The air traffic chief reassured passengers that all NATS systems had been operating “normally” since Monday afternoon, but admitted that the impact of the situation would be felt during a particularly busy travel time of year during the summer holidays. being done.
Some reports said the chaos may have arisen after a French airline incorrectly filed its flight plan. Without confirming or denying the news, Rolf told broadcasters in interviews that the issue may be related to the solo flight plan. He said, “We know the reason for this is flight data and we will get to the bottom of it and understand why this happened. We are probing….” As a result of the incorrect data, flight plans had to be manually uploaded to the system, bringing air traffic to a halt across the UK.
Thousands of passengers were affected, with many forced to spend the night in airports around the world and many still waiting for rescheduled flights. Analysis of flight data showed that around 281 flights, including departures and arrivals, were canceled at Britain’s six busiest airports on Tuesday. Of these, 75 flights had to be canceled at Gatwick, 74 at Heathrow, 63 at Manchester, 28 at Stansted, 23 at Luton and 18 at Edinburgh. According to the International Air Transport Association, the system failure is estimated to cost airlines £100 million in losses.
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