THOUSANDS of angry Scots holidaymakers
were stranded last night after a computer
breakdown.

More than 100 flights from Scottish airports
were cancelled or delayed as bosses tried to
repair the system.

The chaos followed a malfunction at Heathrow
Airport's air traffic control centre in the system
run by National Air Traffic Services, which
keeps track of hundreds of flights coming into
the UK.

It was the second time in two weeks that the
system had failed.

Daily Record

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), June 18, 2000

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Fury in the heat as glitch No2 hits flights Source: The Observer Publication date: 2000-06-18

AIR TRAFFIC controllers were trying last night to find the cause of a computer glitch that grounded dozens of flights, delayed hundreds more and ruined the holiday plans of tens of thousands of people yesterday. Further delays are expected today. Travellers were urged to ring their airlines before setting out.

The breakdown - at the West Drayton control centre in west London - stranded travellers amid sweltering chaos at airports around the country, and stopped flights through British airspace.

The National Air Traffic Services, which runs the centre, admitted it was the second such fault to cause major disruption in a week.

For much of yesterday, all flights to the Continent from British airports were grounded, while Heathrow's Terminal One was closed to all arrivals. The victims included Home Office Minister Lord Bassam, who wanted to fly out to supervise police anti-hooligan operations at last night's England-Germany match in Belgium.

As travellers poured into Heathrow throughout the day, people sat on steps, luggage, trolleys and virtually every available floor space. An Association of British Travel Agents official called it 'a nightmare for holidaymakers'.

At one point, police had to turn back passengers who were arriving on the the Heathrow Express from Paddington and on the Underground.

One passenger, Robert Fitzpatrick, a businessman returning from Lebanon to Belfast, had to wait two hours just get off his arriving flight from Lebanon. 'Beirut was better organised than Heathrow, and they have just had a civil war,' he said.

Airport spokesman Jon Phillips said officials had tried to keep passengers calm and informed about what was happening. 'Our sympathy lies with them,' he added. 'We will now be asking for an explanation from National Air Traffic Services as to why this fault has occurred again.'

'I can't believe a computer failure has brought one of the world's busiest airports to a standstill,' said environmental manager Phil Flowers, from Wednesbury, West Midlands, who waited several hours for his flight to Johannesburg.

Some travellers com plained that had not learnt about the shambles ahead of them until after their Heathrow Express train had left Paddington, when it was too late to turn back.

Others, who were waiting for a connecting flight to Ireland, were told to leave the airport and go home. 'Given that our homes are in Ireland that is a bit difficult,' said one.

The air traffic body, known as Nats, blamed a computer that prints vital 'flight strips' of data detailing each aircraft's course, origin, destination and call sign. The strips are needed for controllers to organise plane movements over South-East England. This traffic was reduced to a trickle as staff wrote the information by hand.

A Nats official denied that the problem was that its system could not cope or was outdated. 'This is not a computer that is too old or creaking at the edges.'

The new Swanwick air traffic centre near Southampton, designed to replace the centre at West Drayton, has been delayed by costly problems for more than four years. But Nats emphasised that there had been no safety problems.

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