A flight plan associated with a British military aircraft reportedly triggered the air traffic control system failure that caused widespread disruption across the United Kingdom this week, according to the Financial Times.
The newspaper reported on Friday that anomalous data linked to the aircraft’s flight plan entered the Flight Processing System (FPS) operated by NATS, the company responsible for managing most UK air traffic control services.
The Financial Times cited four people briefed on the incident. The identity and type of the military aircraft involved were not disclosed, and the UK Ministry of Defence declined to comment to the newspaper.
According to two people cited by the FT, however, the military nature of the flight was not itself responsible for the failure. The problem was related to the data contained in the flight plan and how the NATS system processed it.
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The technical failure began at around 1 p.m. on Tuesday, September 8, and affected the processing of flight information across UK airspace. NATS restored the system nearly four hours later, but the interruption caused extensive delays and cancellations at airports including London Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester.
Around 1,300 flights were cancelled on Tuesday alone, with disruption continuing into Wednesday as airlines worked to reposition aircraft and crews.
The circumstances have drawn comparisons with another major NATS failure in August 2023. That incident was traced to unusual information contained in a flight plan that the system was unable to process correctly, which led to restrictions across UK airspace and thousands of flight cancellations.
Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said NATS had told the airline that this week’s failure was also caused by a “rogue flight plan.” He subsequently accused NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe of misleading the public after Rolfe initially said the latest incident was not a repeat of the 2023 failure.
The UK government has ordered an independent investigation into the outage. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told Parliament that she did not accept that such disruption was inevitable and asked the Civil Aviation Authority to examine both the causes of the failure and the resilience of NATS systems.
The Financial Times also reported that the Flight Processing System affected by the incident does not have a dedicated backup system. NATS is currently carrying out a broader modernization of its air traffic management infrastructure.
