UK Air trouble caused by rare glitch

Dana Malcolm

Staff Writer

#UnitedKingdom, September 9, 2023 – Over 1,500 flights were cancelled in the UK on August 28th, stranding thousands of passengers; now the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) says the error was caused by a glitch so rare it hasn’t been seen in over 15 million flight plans.

The agency promises that steps have been taken so that the failure will never recur.

According to a September 06th report, the meltdown in a flight plan processing subsystem was caused by a flight plan that had two identical names representing two separate waypoint markers. The system then did not process the flight plan correctly.

“In these circumstances, the system could not reject the flight plan without a clear understanding of what possible impact it may have had. Nor could it be allowed through and risk presenting air traffic controllers with incorrect safety critical information,” the NATS report said.

The issue was exacerbated by the fact that the weekend included a bank holiday increasing the number of travelers through airports. UK news agencies report over a quarter of a million people were affected.

Airlines are now demanding to be reimbursed for the inconvenience.