rki.news | Sources Xinhua
LONDON, Sept. 21 (Xinhua): British airlines have criticized National Air Traffic Services (NATS) after a new technical fault disrupted flights, marking the second air traffic control incident in less than two weeks.
NATS said the latest problem occurred at its Prestwick center in Scotland, affecting flights heading north and departures from Scottish airports. Airports in Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England were also affected. NATS said the fault was unrelated to the earlier incident.
British Airways described the disruption as disappointing, while easyJet questioned the resilience of NATS systems and called for action to prevent repeated failures.
Ryanair said more than 140 of its flights were delayed, affecting over 25,000 passengers. The airline again called for NATS Chief Executive Martin Rolfe to resign.
The disruption followed a major NATS outage on Sept. 8 that caused more than 2,000 flight cancellations and affected hundreds of thousands of passengers.
NATS said the earlier incident resulted from a software defect that generated corrupted data for a fraction of a second.
Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority is conducting an independent review.
British Airlines Criticize NATS After New Flight Disruption
