NATS publishes preliminary report on technical incident of 8 September

NATS, the UK's air traffic management provider, has released a preliminary report on a technical incident that occurred on September 8. The incident affected air traffic management at London's Heathrow Airport. The report states that a software change was made to the Performance and Display System (PDS) at 14:45 UTC, which caused a failure in the system's communication with the En-Route Controller Working Position (ERCP). This failure led to a reduction in the number of aircraft that could be handled by the ERCP. The incident lasted for approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes, during which time air traffic controllers were forced to revert to manual procedures. The report concludes that the incident was caused by a software change that was not thoroughly tested, and that the incident was contained without any aircraft being diverted or delayed.