(Adnkronos) – Gradual resumption of traffic at British airports after yesterday’s chaos, but there are still delays and cancellations. The director of National Air Traffic Services (Nats), Martin Rolfe, has ruled out a cyber attack as the cause of the chaos at British airports. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he stated that he “takes full responsibility for what happened”. Regarding the causes of the problem at British airports, particularly departures from London’s Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, and London City airports, as well as Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Belfast, and East Midlands, Rolfe did not elaborate: “We will conduct a very, very thorough and comprehensive investigation. At the moment, we have ruled out a cyber attack. We do not believe it was a cyber attack”.
Over 1,900 flights have been cancelled since Nats experienced a technical problem yesterday until 5 AM this morning. Specifically, yesterday 1,750 flights arriving at and departing from UK airports were cancelled (902 departures and 860 arrivals out of 5,800 scheduled), while today so far 153 flights have been cancelled (55 departures and 98 arrivals).
Obviously, Rolfe emphasizes, “we are now focused on restoring the normal operation of our system, which has now happened. But it is clear that the consequences of the disruption are still very widespread. We will work to resolve them throughout the day. After that, of course, our attention will focus exactly on what happened, on this particular incident. What I can say is that I don’t believe we have ever witnessed the same type of incident twice. So this is something different, something we had never seen in 50 years of operation”. The problem, he adds, “was resolved as quickly as possible, but always within the necessary limits to ensure that everything remained safe”.
