System failure grounds half of European flights

A system failure at European air traffic controller Eurocontrol has caused delays and cancellations to as many as 15,000 flights across 41 member states.

Eurocontrol early this morning said it had fixed the issue with its enhanced tactical flow management system (ETFMS), which it claimed was only the second failure of the system in 20 years.

The ETFMS is "central to the flow management function of the Network Manager, which regulates the flow of flights around Europe", according to Eurocontrol.

The system is used to compare traffic demand with the available capacity of a certain air traffic control sector. 

When the system failed Eurcontrol deliberately reduced the capacity of the European network by 10 percent as a contingency effort. 

It also revealed flight plans filed before 10:26 UTC were lost, with aircraft operators forced to refile the plans.

It said it expected around half of the 29,500 flights scheduled across the European network to experience delays as a result of the system otuage.

Eurocontrol continued operating under its contingency plan for several hours overnight until it reopened access to the ETFMS at around 15:20 UTC.

After "extensive internal testing" the system resumed normal operation at 18:00 UTC.

"Eurocontrol very much regrets the disruption that has been caused to passengers and airlines due to today’s outage of the ETFMS," it said in a statement.

The organisation did not detail the cause of the system failure.