Travellers delayed by air traffic hitch

Tens of thousands of airline passengers were today facing delays after the UK’s air traffic control system crashed.

Airports across Britain were hit, with flights grounded immediately and passengers facing hours of delays to clear the back-log.

Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted were all affected by the computer glitch, with passengers warned to check with airlines before leaving home to travel.

The system went down at around 6am this morning and controllers had to switch to manual operations.

The privatised National Air Traffic Services, (Nats), the firm that operates air traffic control in the UK, said passenger safety was never put at risk despite the computer crash.

Adrian Yalland, spokesman for Nats, said they believed they had located the problem, at an operations centre in West Drayton, near Heathrow Airport, and the system was running again.

Mark Pearson, spokesman for Heathrow Airport, which handles 1,250 flights a day, said: “There is serious disruption at Heathrow as a result of the air traffic control situation. There is an average of two-hour delays on departures and restrictions on arrivals.

“We are advising passengers to check with their airlines before leaving home.”

Gatwick was operating around 10 outbound flights per hour, but would normally handle 30 to 40.

Arrivals are not now affected.

Stansted in Essex was operating at around 60% capacity, according to airport operator BAA.

In Scotland, flights to London and Bristol were grounded, but BAA said services to other parts of the UK were beginning to get up and running.

Most outgoing international traffic was expected to be grounded until 10am.

A spokesman for BAA Airports said transatlantic flights, which only operate north of the border from Glasgow Airport, were unaffected.

Flights were grounded at Manchester Airport between 6.10am and 7am, an airport spokeswoman said.

The airport spokeswoman said: “The system came back up at about 7am which was quicker than anticipated.

“Since 7am flights have been taking off and landing although there are some delays because of the 50-minute stoppage and there will be a backlog.

“We hope it will be back to normal by mid-morning.”

British Airways said the size of the problem was likely to cause “severe delays throughout the day”.

Nats spokesman Mr Yalland said their computer system had crashed just after 6am but the system was up and running again by 7am and was now “fully operational”.

He added: “The fault is thought to lie with the data processing system. We think it is to do with the flow of data.

"The reasons why planes were grounded was because we couldn’t let them into the air which would add more complications. We wanted to ensure the safety of flights in the air.”

He said he did not know how many flights had been affected by the crash.

“The system is not going to go down again,” Mr Yalland added.

It is not the first time the Nats system has gone down leaving passengers in the lurch at airports.

A similar problem hit thousands of air passengers in the summer of 2000.

The controversial privatisation of the air traffic control system was bitterly opposed by political opponents.