Thousands of flights were delayed yesterday due to a fault at the organisation responsible for co-ordinating European air traffic.
Eurocontrol had issued a warning during the day that the delays could affect up to half of all flights across Europe, roughly 15,000.
Ryanair alone cancelled more than 20 flights to and from Stansted, including services to Nice, Cologne, Oslo and Toulouse. At Gatwick, some flights were delayed by three hours or more, including some easyJet services.
The fault, which was fixed at around 7pm last night, was only the second failure in 20 years.
It did not affect air traffic control and it said that passenger safety wasn’t compromised.
The unspecified problem was with the Enhanced Tactical Flow Management System, which helps to manage air traffic by comparing demand and capacity of different air traffic control sectors.
When the fault occurred, Eurocontrol deliberately cut the capacity of the entire European network by 10%.
Meanwhile, passengers arriving Heathrow are being warned to expect average delays of around 20 minutes for the next 10 days while flights to Gatwick are being extended by 10 minutes as air traffic controllers switch to a new system.
