The BBC website is reporting air services across Britain are returning to normal after lengthy delays throughout Saturday. The delays were caused by a fault in the National Air Traffic Service (NATS) equipment which meant Air Traffic Control to handle 20% less traffic. Some of the delays will extend into Sunday.
The BBC website is reporting air services across Britain are returning to normal after lengthy delays throughout Saturday. The delays were caused by a fault in the National Air Traffic Service (NATS) equipment which meant Air Traffic Control to handle 20% less traffic. Some of the delays will extend into Sunday.
The equipment failure was discovered at 6 o'clock in the morning when the night shift handed over to morning shift. The morning shift were unable to activate extra workstations to cope with the increase in traffic and subsequently had to restrict the flow of air traffic
Thousands of passengers experienced delays with some flights cancelled altogether. Airports affected included Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Glasgow and Cardiff. By mid afternoon NATS had processed 2576 flights down from the normal number of about 3000 flights for a Saturday. The system was returned to normal by early evening.
Heathrow airport alone cancelled 228 flights and had an average one hour delay for departures as the system started to return to normal capacity.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25281675 for further information.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25281675