The Times - Be Clatworthy, Kieran Gair, and Seren Hughes
An incorrectly filed flight plan by a French airline cannot be ruled out as the cause of the air traffic control meltdown, No 10 has said.
Speculation is mounting that an error converting a flight plan – which are filed in an international format – could have knocked out the system at the Hampshire headquarters of Nats, the British air traffic controller.
Flight plans are filed for every plane. They are uploaded in an International Civil Aviation Organisation standard format and then converted by each air navigation service provider – in the case of the UK, Nats. The suggestion is that an issue occurred during this process.
