Chaos at Gatwick Airport recap: Transport secretary responds to suggestion cyber attack caused UK air traffic control network failure

https://www.sussexexpress.co.uk/news/transport/london-gatwick-airport-these-are-the-flights-cancelled-or-delayed-so-far-today-tuesday-august-29-including-dozens-of-easyjet-british-airways-and-tui-flights-3959797

Juliet Kennedy, NATS operations director, said: “First of all, I’d like to apologise for the impact on people’s travel plans today.  The issue we had earlier meant our automatic system, which provides controllers with details of every aircraft and its route wasn’t working. Instead, to manage safety, we had to  limit the number of flights we could manage. Our teams worked hard to resolve the problem and I’m pleased to say it was fixed earlier on this afternoon. However, it will take some time for flights to return to normal and we will continue to work with the airlines and airports  to recover the situation. Our absolute priority is safety and we will be investigating very thoroughly what happened. Again I would like to apologise to the travelling public and say our teams will continue to work to get you on your way as soon as we can.” 

Transport Secretary Mark Harper MP told Sky News: “Our technical experts have looked at it and are clear that it wasn’t a cyber security incident. It was a technical issue yesterday morning. Something of this magnitude will be looked at independently by the Civil Aviation Authority and there will be a report that comes to me and we’ll look at that very carefully to see whether there are changes that need to be put in place.”

At around 9.30pm on Monday, Gatwick issued a message on X, saying: “London Gatwick plans to operate a normal schedule on Tuesday 29 August following disruption today. Passengers are however advised to check the status of their flight with the airline before travelling to the airport.”

Read more: https://www.sussexexpress.co.uk/news/uk-air-traffic-control-network-failure-hits-gatwick-cyber-security-incident-ruled-out-as-airport-plans-to-operate-normal-schedule-4271065

“We have identified and remedied the technical issue affecting our flight planning system this morning. We are now working closely with airlines and airports to manage the flights affected as efficiently as possible. Our engineers will be carefully monitoring the system’s performance as we return to normal operations.

“The flight planning issue affected the system’s ability to automatically process flight plans, meaning that flight plans had to be processed manually which cannot be done at the same volume, hence the requirement for traffic flow restrictions. Our priority is always to ensure that every flight in the UK remains safe and we are sincerely sorry for the disruption this is causing. Please contact your airline for information on how this may affect your flight.”