 An ageing computer system has been blamed for the air traffic control meltdown causing thousands of Brits to be left stranded across the globe. According to one expert, the chaos may have erupted from a controller putting too many dots in a flight plan request. The widespread disruption which started on Monday is understood to have been caused by a single rogue flight plan and continues to affect dozens of services two days later. Controllers need basic information on each flight to populate their display, such as the flight number, aircraft type, destination and route. If these details are not spaced and formatted in a certain way, and the computer does not recognise the data, it can cause a system collapse – a failure described this morning as 'staggering' by former British Airways boss Willie Walsh. Many affected travellers are being told to wait as long as 10 days for flights home, with some forced to sleep on airport floors or take long routes by land after their flights were cancelled. Airlines have been criticised for failing to book hotel rooms for many people who were delayed overnight. People were also stranded at Gatwick Airport (Picture: AFP via Getty Images) Chaos has been seen in airports across the coutry, including Gatwick (Picture: Getty Images) Flights were still being cancelled or disrupted yesterday afternoon (Picture: PA) Michele Robson, who has worked in air traffic control for more than 20 years, told the Sky News Daily podcast: 'When there have been failures in the past, it's normally something to do with bad information that's been input in the incorrect format. 'It's a very old system, it's been running for many years and generally, we've been very lucky and we don't often have failures, or if we do, we get it back during that backup time, which is what it's there for. 'There have been other instances where s){kind=link}
NEWS… BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT
An ageing computer system has been blamed for the air traffic control meltdown causing thousands of Brits to be left stranded across the globe.
According to one expert, the chaos may have erupted from a controller putting too many dots in a flight plan request.
The widespread disruption which started on Monday is understood to have been caused by a single rogue flight plan and continues to affect dozens of services two days later.
Controllers need basic information on each flight to populate their display, such as the flight number, aircraft type, destination and route.