The boss of the UK’s main air traffic control provider will face a grilling from the Transport Secretary on Wednesday as widespread disruption continues with hundreds of flights cancelled following a technical issue.
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hundreds → face → issue
Flight monitoring website Flightradar24 said 1,300 flights to and from UK airports were axed on Tuesday after a system issue hit Nats, the National Air Traffic Service, which provides air traffic control services to 15 UK airports.
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which → say → airports
Tens of thousands of passengers were caught up in the chaos, which continued on Wednesday with further cancellations and delays expected as airlines deal with the knock-on impacts at airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted.
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airlines → catch → Heathrow
According to FlightRadar, 246 flights had been cancelled at Heathrow Airport by 6am on Wednesday, while Gatwick passengers faced 33 cancellations.
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passengers → accord → cancellations
Speaking to the BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, Mr Rolfe apologised for the issue but dodged questions over whether he would resign.
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he → speak → questions
He said: “Inevitably, things do go wrong in complex systems.
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things → say → systems
“We never want them to.
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them → want → ?
We always hope they won’t, but we absolutely plan for them to and make sure we handle them properly.”
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we → hope → them
Mr Rolfe added: “I would say the UK has one of the best reputations in the world for its air traffic control service, both from a safety perspective and from a resilience perspective.
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UK → add → perspective
“Nats was actually a partial privatisation 25 years ago, and since that point, it’s had access to funding.
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it → have → funding
“We’ve invested way more than a billion in technology over that time, our service has consistently improved.
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service → invest → time
Our safety is consistently improved from a very good base.
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safety → improve → base
“But all of those things don’t detract from the fact that when these things happen, it is disappointing and upsetting, for which I apologise.”
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I → detract → which
On the cause of the problem, Mr Rolfe said a “thorough” investigation would take place, but ruled out a cyber attack.
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investigation → say → attack
He added: “My focus and that of the team has been on both getting our system operating back up normally, which it is now, but there’s obviously a huge tail to the disruption and we’ll be working on that through the course of today.
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we → add → today
“And then our attention will turn to exactly what’s happened in this particular incident.
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what → turn → incident
“What I will say is, I don’t believe we’ve ever seen an incident happen more than once, so this will be something different that we’ve never seen in 50 years of operation.”
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we → say → operation
British Airways (BA) said it was forced to cancel or divert more than 100 flights on Tuesday which had impacted “tens of thousands of customers”.
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which → say → customers
Mr Rolfe has been under fire from Wizz Air and Ryanair after the latest issue which saw some passengers trapped on planes on runways for hours.
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passengers → see → hours
Neal McMahon, Ryanair’s chief operating officer, called on Mr Rolfe to resign, saying: “How many more failures do passengers have to suffer before overpaid failure Nats CEO Martin Rolfe accepts responsibility for his repeated mismanagement and resigns?
“Over three years after Nats’ catastrophic 2023 system meltdown, it’s clear that nothing has changed, with UK passengers once again suffering avoidable ATC (air traffic control) delays of up to eight hours today due a critical Nats ATC system failing.”
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passengers → call → failing
Mr McMahon said Tuesday’s incident was caused by “exactly the same issue” as an incident in 2023.
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incident → say → 2023
In August that year, more than 700,000 passengers experienced disruption when flights were grounded at UK airports as Nats suffered a technical glitch while processing a flight plan.
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Nats → experience → plan
Speaking to Times Radio Breakfast, Mr McMahon said of Tuesday’s problem: “Nats told us it was a flight planning processing failure, which is exactly the same issue that happened in 2023.
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that → speak → 2023
“If you remember in 2023 there was an issue with a flight plan, and it sent the system in a loop that eventually caused it to shut down.
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it → remember → loop
“We’re told that that was a rogue flight plan and we’re told yesterday this was a spurious flight plan which caused the same outage and our question is like: these things can happen, but where’s the backup systems?”
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systems → tell → outage
Last July, a “radar-related issue” caused an air traffic control failure that grounded flights across the UK, disrupting thousands of passengers and forcing the cancellation of more than 160 flights.
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that → relate → flights
The problem happened at Nats’ control centre in Swanwick, Hampshire, and affected the vast majority of England and Wales.
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problem → happen → England
Discussing the response to Tuesday’s incident, Mr Rolfe said: “We had everybody on site, everybody was in the right place.
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everybody → discuss → place
We had all the engineers in place.
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We → have → place
We had our various partners from software industries and so on all on hand.
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We → have → hand
“So this was resolved as quickly as it could be, but within the limits of making sure that it all stayed safe.”
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it → resolve → limits
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