Airlock

Thousands of passengers spent the weekend at airports

A computer glitch at the air traffic control center in Swanwick, Hampshire, which controls much of the airspace over England and Wales, caused chaos at UK airports on Friday. Thousands of passengers gathered waiting for flights. British Airways was forced to cancel 87 flights, including several to Moscow. In five hours the computer system was put in order, but throughout the weekend British airports, primarily Gatwick and Heathrow, struggled to send delayed flights. The situation was complicated by simultaneous problems in the activities of the dispatch service in Brussels.

The problems in Svanvik began at half past seven on Friday morning after a routine monthly update of the computer system was carried out. The procedure was postponed for a day due to the final match of the European Cup in Scotland, which led to significant congestion in the national airspace. After updating the system, it suddenly became clear that almost half of the 20 terminals were inoperable. As a result, dispatchers were forced to halve the number of aircraft in the country's airspace. However, according to National Air Transport Service (NATS) chief executive Richard Everitt, "air safety was not affected".

This is the third failure in the UK air traffic control service in the last two months. In April, hundreds of flights were delayed for several hours due to problems with the computer system at the West Drayton control center near Heathrow Airport. A similar incident happened before this in March. But it was precisely to ensure the uninterrupted operation of the dispatch service that a new specialized flight control center was opened in January of this year in Svanvik, which became one of the largest in the world. The need for its creation became obvious in the early 90s, by which time the number of air flights in UK airspace was doubling every 15 years. IBM was chosen to create a new computer network and develop original software. IBM subsequently resold the project to Loral, which in turn sold it to Lockheed Martin. The created system is designed for uninterrupted operation for 20 years.

The cost of building the flagship of the British air traffic control service has doubled the original estimate and amounted to 623 million pounds. In addition, Svansvik entered service six years late. Last year, the UK government, despite opposition protests, decided to partially privatize the air traffic control service. Today, NATS is 46% owned by a group of seven British airlines, including British Airways and Virgin Atlantic. The UK air traffic control system handles 2 million flights annually and has four centers in Swanwick, West Drayton, Manchester and Prestwick (Scotland).

Andrey ZLOBIN