UK air traffic control outage caused by software defect, says operator

By Reuters News

LONDON, Sept 18 (Reuters) - British air traffic control operator NATS said on Friday an outage which affected hundreds of thousands of passengers last week was cause by a software defect.

NATS CEO Martin Rolfe said the shutdown was not related to a problem in 2023 which also caused widespread disruption, nor was it linked to military intervention - as reported by some media outlets last week. He added that safety was at no point compromised during the incident.

"This was a software issue in a specific part of our flight data system, that we have traced to a small subsection of coding," he said. "The issue has been identified and mitigation is in place while a permanent fix is safety tested and deployed."

Transport minister Heidi Alexander said the disruption was "completely unacceptable", adding that "we need to urgently understand why this issue was not discovered and fixed before it caused chaos".

"It is crucial that our national infrastructure is fit for the future," she said in a statement.

Capital.com is an execution-only brokerage platform and the content provided on the Capital.com website is intended for informational purposes only and should not be regarded as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy the products or securities to which it applies. No representation or warranty is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information provided.

The information provided does not constitute investment advice nor take into account the individual financial circumstances or objectives of any investor. Any information that may be provided relating to past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results or performance.

To the extent permitted by law, in no event shall Capital.com (or any affiliate or employee) have any liability for any loss arising from the use of the information provided. Any person acting on the information does so entirely at their own risk.

Any information which could be construed as “investment research” has not been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research and as such is considered to be a marketing communication.