UK air traffic controller blames a millisecond-software glitch for flight cancellations

LONDON (AP) — A preliminary report on Friday attributed the cancellation of over 2,000 flights in and out of the United Kingdom last week to a millisecond-software glitch. National Air Traffic Services (NATS), the organization responsible for British air traffic control, stated that the defect in the National Airspace System, which assigns codes for flights on radar, led to the decision to cancel the flights.

The chaos at British airports and beyond, which stranded passengers for hours and took days to resolve, was the latest setback for NATS, which operates the U.K. air traffic control system. NATS' chief executive, Martin Rolfe, acknowledged the issue was a software problem in a specific section of their flight data system and assured that mitigation measures were in place while a permanent fix was being tested and deployed.

The incident, which occurred in just a millisecond, prompted calls for Rolfe to resign and prompted an independent review by the Civil Aviation Authority to investigate the cause and ensure future resilience.