The widespread air travel disruption that affected more than 1,500 flights last week in the United Kingdom was caused by an "extremely rare set of circumstances," the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) said in a report released on Wednesday.
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According to the report, an important part of NATS' air traffic control (ATC) system encountered "an extremely rare set of circumstances presented by a flight plan that included two identically named but separate waypoint markers outside of UK airspace." This led to a "critical exception," causing the primary and backup systems to enter a fail-safe mode.
More than 1,500 flights were canceled and hundreds more were delayed after the ATC system was forced to revert to a manual system on August 28, causing troubles for thousands of passengers during one of the busiest travel periods in the summer.
"This was a one in 15 million chance," Martin Rolfe, chief executive of NATS, told the BBC, adding that the organization has processed 15 million flight plans with the ATC system but has never seen this before.
Following NATS' submission of its preliminary technical report, the UK's civil aviation regulator said that it will launch an independent review of the system failure and of NATS' response.
"If there is evidence to suggest NATS may have breached its statutory and licensing obligations we will consider whether any further action is necessary," Rob Bishton, joint-interim chief executive at the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), said.
The CAA has shared NATS' preliminary report with the secretary of state for transport and the aviation minister.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper said he will chair a meeting between NATS, the CAA and the aviation industry on Thursday, where NATS will present its findings and consider initial feedback from airlines. ■
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