OAG Travel News

Flights have been cancelled and hundreds more delayed at airports across south-east England today following a computer glitch at Britain's main air traffic control centre.

No flights were able to depart from Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton airports between 4pm and 4.30pm, airport groups said, after a system failure. British Airways cancelled a handful of flights at Heathrow as a backlog of 30 planes built up at Britain's busiest airport.

A spokesperson for NATS, Britain's largest air traffic controller, said its Swanwick centre had suffered a computer failure that affected the monitoring of flights when they reach a higher altitude, forcing immediate changes to flight patterns that caused take-off delays. The spokesperson added that radar screens did not go blank while technicians scrambled to fix the glitch.

"The radar is working okay and controllers can still see aircraft and talk to the pilots," he said.

However, it is likely that dozens of flights will have to be cancelled, with knock-on effects around the UK and Europe, because the system is still being fixed, said NATS. BAA, the UK's largest airport owner, said: "The situation has got better quickly but there is a lot of congestion on the airfield at Heathrow."

This is not the first time that the £623m air traffic control centre at Swanwick has caused problems for air passengers. Swanwick was blighted by computer glitches after it opened in 2002. At one point traffic controllers at one point to rely on hand-written slips of paper for the call sign and route of each aircraft.

A spokeswoman for Luton Airport said that cancellations were possible but "this is not a blanket cancellation of all flights."

"We are suffering delays due to the restrictions placed on flights by NATS."

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk