A preliminary report released Friday blamed a software defect for the cancellation of over 2,000 flights in and out of the United Kingdom last week. NATS, formerly known as National Air Traffic Services, said the glitch on Sept. 8 was behind the mayhem at British airports and beyond, rather than any human failings—as many had speculated at the time. It said a software defect in the National Airspace System, which allocates codes so air traffic controllers can identify flights on radar, was behind the decision to scrap the flights, the AP reports. The move affected hundreds of thousands of travelers. The problem "happened in the space of a millisecond," the report said.
The chaos, which stranded passengers for hours on airport runways and in terminals and took days to clear up, was the latest embarrassment to afflict NATS, which operates the UK air traffic control system. It prompted calls for Chief Executive Martin Rolfe to step down. He said mitigation measures are in place while a permanent fix to the coding problem is tested and deployed. Apologizing again for the chaos, Rolfe said it was not a result of "any incorrect actions by either military or civil operators." UK Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander ordered Rolfe's organization to conduct an investigation and directed the Civil Aviation Authority to conduct an independent review of NATS' findings. The government owns 49% of NATS.
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
