Arabic version: ناتس تلقي باللوم على عيب برمجي في فوضى الرحلات الجوية بالمملكة المتحدة

According to BBC News, the UK’s national air traffic service, Nats, said a “software defect” caused an air traffic control system failure that triggered widespread disruption earlier this month. Nats said the problem occurred “in the space of a millisecond” and caused the system to produce corrupted data.

More than 2,000 flights were cancelled and hundreds of thousands of passengers were affected. Flights at major UK airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton and Glasgow were disrupted. Some travellers slept on airport floors or were stranded overseas, while it took days to fully resolve the disruption because aircraft and crews had been left out of position.

In an initial report, Nats said the defect was in the system that “underpins the management of UK airspace”. Chief executive Martin Rolfe apologised again to those affected and said Nats was devastated when delays occurred. He said the organisation’s primary role was to keep the skies safe, adding that safety was not in question at any point during the incident.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander called the disruption “completely unacceptable” and said it was clear there was an urgent need to understand why the issue had not been found and fixed before it caused chaos. A Civil Aviation Authority review is under way. The government had previously ruled out a cyber attack, while the Ministry of Defence denied a report that a military aircraft was responsible.

Passengers have also raised concerns about airline support and compensation. Addie Kitson, 26, said her flight home from Chengdu, China, was diverted to Stockholm and that she spent 19 hours in the airport after being kept on the plane for several hours. She said an £11 food voucher did not cover a sandwich and that she faced almost £100 in unexpected costs for refreshments, plug adaptors and Wi-Fi. She questioned why the incident was classified as an extraordinary event for compensation purposes.