Chaos at Gatwick Airport recap: Transport secretary responds to suggestion cyber attack caused UK air traffic control network failure
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Gatwick Airport said delays and cancellations were likely after the UK's air traffic control system was hit by a network failure on one of the busiest days of the year (Bank Holiday Monday, August 28)
Around midday, National Air Traffic Controllers said they were currently experiencing a technical issue, which meant the automatic system – which provides controllers with details of every aircraft and its route – wasn’t working.
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Hide AdNATS operations director Juliet Kennedy said on Monday evening: "Instead, to manage safety, we had to limit the number of flights we could manage. Our teams worked hard to resolve the problem and I’m pleased to say it was fixed earlier this afternoon. However, it will take some time for flights to return to normal and we will continue to work with the airlines and airports to recover the situation. Our absolute priority is safety and we will be investigating very thoroughly what happened."
Thousands of passengers were said to be stranded at airports – including some sat on planes unable to take-off. Passengers reportedly also were unable to get into the UK.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper MP has ruled out the possibility that the failure was caused by a cyber attack.
He told Sky News on Tuesday, August 29: “Our technical experts have looked at it and are clear that it wasn’t a cyber security incident. It was a technical issue yesterday morning. Something of this magnitude will be looked at independently by the Civil Aviation Authority and there will be a report that comes to me and we'll look at that very carefully to see whether there are changes that need to be put in place.”
He added that a failure on this scale had not happened for almost a decade.
Recap all the updates as they happened below.
Chaos at Gatwick Airport after UK air traffic control network failure: Live updates as passengers left stranded
Dozens of delays and cancellations
These are the flights that are cancelled or delayed to and from Gatwick so far this afternoon (Monday, August 28) – including multiple easyJet and British Airways flights.
easyJet customers on cancelled flights given option to transfer their flight free of charge or receive a refund
Everything we know so far
Good afternoon.
There has been a major incident involving the UK’s air traffic control system today, affecting Gatwick Airport.
The Sussex airport said ‘delays and cancellations are likely’ after the UK’s air traffic control system was hit by a network failure on one of the busiest days of the year.
National Air Traffic Controllers said they are currently experiencing a technical issue, which will result in flight delays today (Monday, August 28)
Thousands of passengers are said to be stranded at airports – including some sat on their planes now unable to take-off. Passengers have reportedly also been unable to get into the UK on this Bank Holiday Monday.
A NATS statement read: “This morning’s technical issue is affecting our ability to automatically process flight plans. Until our engineers have resolved this, flight plans are being input manually which means we cannot process them at the same volume, hence we have applied traffic flow restrictions. Our technical experts are looking at all possible solutions to rectify this as quickly as possible.
“Our priority is ensuring every flight in the UK remains safe and doing everything we can to minimise the impact. Please contact your airline for information on how this may affect your flight. We are sincerely sorry for the disruption this is causing.”