A failure that occurred in the management system that directs the air traffic in Europe has caused disruption to almost 15000 flights. Half of all the flights which suffered the delay were in Europe. Eurocontrol, the international organization has the charge of managing the air traffic over the 41 countries in Europe. The ‘Enhanced Tactical Flow Management System’ failed and caused the complications. The failure affected the flights with plans filed prior to 10:26 UTC. This required the aircraft operators to refile the plans which delayed thousands of flights.
There has been a failure of the Enhanced Tactical Flow Management System. Contingency procedures are being put in place which will have the effect of reducing the capacity of the European network by approximately 10%. Further information will be provided as soon as possible.
— EUROCONTROL (@eurocontrol) April 3, 2018
Eurocontrol said in a statement, “Today 29,500 flights were expected in the European network. Approximately half of those could have some delay as a result of the system outage.” The system was functioning correctly as reported around 18:00 but after several hours of operating under a contingency plan, during which the departures were limited to 10 departures per hour.
Software surely rules the world!
