
Thousands of travellers were left stranded after 1,575 flights were cancelled following the technical fault in the UK's air traffic control (ATC) system on Monday.
Many travellers preparing to fly in and out of the UK face further travel disruption for days amid reports that an air traffic control fault may have been initially caused by a French airline.
Downing Street on Tuesday refused to rule out the possibility that an inputting error by a French airline could have caused the disruption.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “There’s going to be, think you’ll know that there’s going to be an investigation by the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) and a report shared with Government.
“I think (Transport Secretary) Mark Harper confirmed this morning he’ll be getting that in days.
“I’m not going to pre-empt that. I’ve seen, obviously, various bits of speculation, but I’m not going to pre-empt the work that needs to be done.”
The glitch meant flight plans had
to be input manually by air traffic controllers, with the disruption continuing
into Tuesday with flights cancelled and delayed and many aircraft and crews out
of position.
Transport secretary Mark Harper said the travel disruption will last for days.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Tuesday: "The last time there was something this significant was about a decade ago, so these things do not happen frequently.
"It is going to take some days to get completely everybody back to where they should be."
Aviation analytics company Cirium
said 790 departures and 785 arrivals were cancelled across all UK airports on
Monday, a total of 1,575. That was the equivalent of about 27% of planned
flights.
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