UK air traffic control has been hit by another “technical issue”, just weeks after a separate technical glitch led to 2,000 flight cancellations.
The latest problem occurred at National Air Traffic Services’ (NATS) Prestwick centre in Scotland. NATS has since confirmed the issue is “now fixed.”
The air traffic control provider apologised, telling the BBC: “Any service interruption is unwanted, and something we take very seriously.”
NATS said the latest problem was “a connectivity issue with part of our systems network, specific to the operation in Scotland.”
“It is nothing to do with the problem we had earlier this month,” it added.
But while the technical issue has been fixed, the disruption is continuing to ripple through UK airports.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has warned passengers to expect delays as “things reset,” with airports including Glasgow, Aberdeen, Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool, Bristol, London City and Belfast City among those affected.
The latest outage is already raising fresh questions about the reliability of the UK’s air traffic control system.
The BBC reports that airlines including EasyJet and Ryanair, along with trade body Airlines UK, have questioned the reliability of NATS systems.
It comes just weeks after Open Jaw reported a “technical error” at NATS caused widespread disruption and at least 2,000 flight cancellations.
At the time, there were calls for NATS CEO Martin Rolfe to resign, while Alexander summoned him to explain what had gone wrong.
A “software defect” was eventually identified as the cause of that disruption.
NATS has stressed that the latest issue is unrelated to the earlier incident.
