2023-08-30 13:43:20
CORRESPONDENT
London
Updated Wednesday, August 30, 2023 – 13:43
The situation began to return to normal on Wednesday, after two days of disruption at airports and with more than 6,000 flights cancelled.
A screen shows canceled or delayed flights at Heathrow Airport from lt;HIT gt;London lt;/HIT gt; on August 28, 2023.. (AP Photo /Alberto Pezzali)Alberto PezzaliAP
The chaos caused by a technical failure in the air control systems in the United Kingdom oblige to cancel more than 1,100 flights and it can pass a bill of more than 100 million pounds (116 million euros) to the companies, according to what Willie Walsh, general director of the International Air Transport Association (Iata) told the BBC.
The situation at British airports began to normalize throughout Wednesday, after two days of disruption at airports, with more than 6,000 flights in and out of the country affected in full return operation and on the days with the highest air traffic in the world. ao.
Martin Rolfe, director of the National Air Traffic Service (Nats), confirmed that the “technical error” in the control systems during seven hours and it was due to the receipt of “an incorrect flight plan” that caused the system to crash and forced manual processing.
According to Rolfe, the ability to control traffic was severely reduced, but it did not force the airspace to be completely closed, as several British media initially reported. “There are no indications that a cyberattack had taken place,” concluded the director of the Nats, who sent the preliminary report on the causes of the technical failure to Secretary of Transportation Mark Harper.
According to The Daily Mail, the incorrect data on the flight plan that led to the crash of the system could have come from a French airline, although this information has not been officially confirmed.
An estimated 200,000 passengers have been affected by flight cancellations and delays. The British Government has expressed its concern over the situation in which thousands of families have found themselves, forced to spend the night in airports and abandoned to their fate by the airlines.
The consumer advocacy group Which? has called for urgent action by the Civil Aviation Authority to force airlines to assist passengers. “We are receiving dozens of complaints from people being forced to sleep on the floor, surrounded by cockroaches and hardly receiving any information from the companies,” said Rory Boland, editor of Which? Travel magazine.
After three days of waiting at the Gran Canaria airport, Chanel Acheampong related her odyssey to ITV’s Good Moring Britain program: “Eight members of a family traveled: my niece is diabetic and we hardly have any insulin left. The company He said it wasn’t his problem, but we desperately need to go home to get the medication.”
Danny Underdown recounted his experience from Turkey, from where he is still waiting for a plane back to London: “They told us at first that our flight was not going to be affected. They took us to a waiting room, we were there for seven and eight hours without any information. , until they took us to a hotel three hours from the airport. The next day we got on the bus, we thought we were going to the airport but they took us to another hotel. Many people travel with small children and have had trouble finding diapers.”
Los London airports they were also collapsed by the suspension of more than 700 outbound flights. 80% of flights from Heathrow were still affected by delays through Wednesday, after more than 70 flights were canceled on Tuesday. The airport management urged passengers to check the status of their flights before going to the terminal and warned that schedules will be “significantly altered” over the next few days.
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