The failure in the United Kingdom that has affected dozens of flights in Lanzarote since last Monday, has already caused the cancellation of 2,000 flights departing from or arriving in the British country.
More than 1,000 flights that should have departed from the United Kingdom in the last three days were canceled due to the failure of the island nation's flight system, according to aviation analysis company Cirium.
Also, 983 arrivals to British airports were canceled until 9:00 a.m. this Wednesday, August 30. On Monday alone in Lanzarote, there had been 27 alterations due to cancellations or delays of flights originating from or destined for the United Kingdom.
The cause of the failure, which has cost airlines 116 million euros
It is estimated that the failure has cost airlines 100 million pounds sterling (about 116 million euros), according to the director of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Willie Walsh.
Martin Rolfe, chief executive of National Air Traffic Services (NATS), said an initial investigation had found that the air traffic control failure was caused by flight data that its system "did not understand" and "could not interpret."
Rolfe added that this "unreliable" data was kept out of the reach of air traffic controllers so that they would not "act unsafely," so NATS returned to manual systems.
He said this allowed them to "continue operating but at a much lower capacity, handling fewer flights."
