Irish flight disruption could last for days after 20 cancelled at Dublin Airport on Tuesday

Airlines cancelled 20 flights into and out of Dublin Airport on Tuesday as a result of the knock-on impact of an air traffic control technical fault in the United Kingdom. The travel disruption affecting flights could last for days as further departures and arrivals were affected on Tuesday morning, in addition to the 115 flights cancelled on Monday. On Tuesday night, Britain’s National Air Traffic Services (Nats) chief executive Martin Rolfe, said there was no evidence of a cyber attack. He said the failure was caused by flight data received by Nats, with both primary and back-up systems responding by suspending automatic processing. Rolfe said he also wanted to “reassure” people that all Nats systems have been running normally since Monday afternoon to support airline and airport operations. He said: “Very occasionally technical issues occur that are complex and take longer to resolve. In the event of such an issue our systems are designed to isolate the problem and prioritise continued safe air traffic control. This is what happened yesterday. At no point was UK airspace closed but the number of flights was significantly reduced. Initial investigations into the problem show it relates to some of the flight data we received. Our systems, both primary and the back-ups, responded by suspending automatic processing to ensure that no incorrect safety-related information could be presented to an air traffic controller or impact the rest of the air traffic system. There are no indications that this was a cyber-attack.<br/>