Monday’s air traffic control chaos in Britain was likely caused by a single misfiled flight plan, the head of the UK Air Traffic Services has said.
Martin Rolfe says he is "fairly certain" that a cyber attack was not the cause of the problem but that an investigation would get to the bottom of it.
“I’m not ruling out anything at this stage,” he said.
“We are conducting an investigation, we will conduct it incredibly thoroughly and we will make sure that we have all of the answers to make sure that we understand what went wrong but also to make sure that we understand how to avoid things like this happening in the future.”
Thousands of passengers are stranded in Dublin airport. 29/08/2023. Photo: Sasko LazarovA cyber attack has also been ruled out as the cause by Britain’s Transport Secretary.
“Our technical experts have looked at it and are clear it wasn’t a cyber security incident,” Mark Harper told Sky News.
“So, it was a technical issue yesterday morning. Something on this magnitude will be looked at independently by the civil aviation authority and there will be a report that comes to me.”
29/08/2023 Dublin Ireland. Photo: Sasko Lazarov/© RollingNews.ieYesterday, Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary said he hoped today things would be back to normal.
“We’re looking to run a couple of additional extra flights today - rescue flights,” he said.
“It’s very difficult because we’re also tight on crews, we’re also tight on aircraft.
“We hope by the end of the day, Tuesday, that we’ll be running a normal operation.”
On Tuesday, 20 flights to and from Dublin were cancelled.
Main image: Man at Dublin Airport. Picture by: RollingNews.ie
