A military aircraft entering ‘spurious’ flight data into the UK’s air traffic control system has been blamed for a meltdown which grounded thousands of planes, it emerged tonight.
Some 2,000 flights were grounded to and from the UK after a four-hour technical failure at National Air Traffic Services (NATS) on Tuesday, hitting more than 300,000 travellers with delays or cancellations.
Sources said NATS’ operations director, Kathryn Leahy, told industry bosses during a call that evening that a flight plan submitted by an aircraft – understood to belong to the UK military – triggered the shutdown of Britain’s skies for several hours.
Industry insiders said
To provide well-rounded coverage and a breadth of insight across various events, we rely on contributions from several staff writers, each bringing their own area of expertise to our publication.