The air traffic control system controlling London airspace has been restored after a technical failure, the UK air traffic management company NATS said Friday, but travelers can expect disruption and cancellations to flights.
"We are in the process of
returning to normal operations. We apologise for any delays and the
inconvenience this may have caused," NATS said.
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"Further information will be released as it becomes available."
NATS said a short time
before that London airspace was open but that traffic was being
restricted in line with the capacity in the system.
Travelers passing through London can expect to experience delays or disruption to their flights for hours to come.
According to Heathrow
Airport, the NATS systems were "now working and stable" but that there
are still some restrictions to airspace.
About 50 flights had been
canceled so far and Heathrow expected that number to rise over the
course of the evening and into Saturday.
"The earlier problem will
cause delays and cancellations to flights for the rest of the day and
is likely to have a knock on effect on some services tomorrow because
aircraft and crew will now be out of position," Heathrow said in a
statement.
"Passengers due to
depart today and tomorrow should check the status of their flight with
their airline before traveling to Heathrow. We are very sorry for the
disruption to passengers' journeys."
Extra staff will be on duty to help passengers, it said. Luton, Gatwick and Stansted airports also warned of delays.
A spokesman for budget
airline Ryanair, Robin Kiely, told CNN that flights were expected to
resume with delays but that cancellations were not expected.
He slammed NATS over the
problem, saying it was "unacceptable" that its system had "dropped for
the second time in 12 months, particularly on a busy Friday in the run
up to Christmas."
Aviation security expert
Glenn Schoen told CNN the incident had exposed a weakness in the air
traffic system, a problem that needs to be addressed urgently.
"We're going to have a
major digital forensic effort here I think, driven by British
authorities -- maybe with assistance from international aviation
authorities -- to get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible," he
said.
"The disconcerting
aspect here is the humungous impact of what appears to be one technical
error. It doesn't appear like a whole group of people made a mistake or a
whole group of systems all had an error at the same time, so it tells
us somewhere in how the system is configured now, there are
vulnerabilities we did not know about and apparently have not been
accounted for in terms of control measures."
British Airways offered
refunds or the chance to rebook to any of its passengers not wishing to
travel Friday in light of the problems.
"We anticipate
disruption to both departing and arriving flights but will do all we can
to minimise any impact," it said in a statement.
It's not just UK travelers who will be affected by the glitch.
"All flights that are
supposed to fly London from Charles de Gaulle are delayed," a
spokesperson for Paris Charles de Gaulle airport told CNN.
"Flights from Tunisia will be landing at Charles de Gaulle instead of London."
Mary Ryan, a spokeswoman
for United Airlines, said none of its inbound flights Friday was
affected but that four outbound flights were being held at the gate
until the issue was resolved.
A spokesman for Delta Airlines advised passengers bound for London Friday to check the status of their flight before traveling.
The European air traffic
control network, Eurocontrol, earlier said all London airspace was
closed because of a computer failure, and that no flights would be
accepted in or out of London until 7 p.m. (2 p.m. ET.)
The issue affected the
air traffic control center in Swanwick, which controls all air traffic
routes in southern England and Wales, up to approximately Manchester. A
second air traffic control center at Prestwick in Scotland takes over
air routes from there. It has not been affected, NATS said.
Thousands of travelers
heading into or out of the British capital for the weekend are likely to
be delayed, as well as those on flights connecting through London
airports. Besides Heathrow Airport, they include Gatwick, Stansted,
Luton and London City airports.
CNN's Jim Boulden said
more than 80 airlines fly in and out of Heathrow, with some 200,000
people passing through the airport daily.
"The system is working
fine, but it's the aircraft that are in the wrong place -- it's the
aircraft that are delayed," he said. "There's a number of planes that
have been diverted to other places, they still have to get here -- to
London."
Schoen said the resulting effects would be significant.
"The parking of the
aircraft, refueling, servicing of the aircraft, the security guarding
and checking of the aircraft, the handling of the passengers at
different airports where they're not really planning on that kind of
capacity for the coming night -- perhaps this is happening overseas as
well -- flights that were en route to the United Kingdom now diverting
to other places," he said.
"Hopefully this will not
affect some of the biggest, busiest flights. Think about you piloting
an Airbus A380 en route to London and you needing to divert, and having
to fit that into a schedule of another airport. So these are some major
challenges throughout the system that we're hoping and we're assuming
authorities -- not just in the UK but elsewhere as well -- are ready to
handle now."
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