Air traffic control— cyber attack?

[Stableunicorns]

DH is on a work trip abroad. Due to fly back to London this evening but his flight has been cancelled due to “air traffic control issues”. Currently rescheduled to tomorrow morning.

I look online and find references to “delays and cancellations”. But given that his flight has been completely cancelled, not just delayed, hours in advance, suggests to me that there’s a massive problem and it’s being downplayed by the authorities.

AIBU to think there’s been a cyber attack and we’re not being told the full story?

Duplicate names does not surprise me. After all, Malmo is in Sweden for most people, but is Copenhagen for Ryanair.

I think it is just some glitch not a cyber attacj.

Grateful for the technical insight being shared. I do feel a bit anxious about DH getting home safely. I get the feeling that the situation is being downplayed.

This tweet from Flightradar seems pretty revealing.
https://x.com/flightradar24/status/2097358759018320335?s=20
There are basically no planes in the air around London!

". After all, Malmo is in Sweden for most people, but is Copenhagen for Ryanair"

😄😃

I don't think it's all airports, flights seem OK at Bournemouth for example. There are a lot of people sat on planes on the tarmac. Apparently Heathrow has ran out of space as all grounded.

I.wouldn't worry about the flight safety side of this - the system did what it was meant to and stopped.

The bigger practical problem is if/when crews go out of hours and flights get definitively cancelled until ? there's a fair chance there won't be enough hotel rooms to go round, even at somewhere like LHR.

It's effecting all southern UK airspace to some degree, it's just not manifesting itself at the smaller airports quite as much because less movements means less demand on ramp space.

Not a big leap at all OP, and quite probably the truth. There some fascinating naivety and wishful thinking going on on this thread.

That actually makes it even more likely that it's a targeted attack, imo. I'm a systems person, so is the DH who thinks the same.

So DH was supposed to be flying home late tonight.
His flight was originally moved to early tomorrow morning but has now changed to Thursday morning!
A delay of 36 hours!

Or maybe just calm, rational, non hysterical reasoning backed up by people who know the industry.

Flight planning feed goes down for whatever reason.

Aircraft can't depart, ramp space fills up...

You may wish to head off into cyber attack territory,.I'm not inclined to think you have to go that way

NATS have shown before (and not that long ago) that their IT system in places isn't 100% robust and without any external nudge it can produce something like we have seen today.

Given how quickly the system was fixed and made live again, I think it's unlikely to be a cyber attack.

It's more likely someone in NATS tech team is going to have to explain to their boss why they didn't test a piece of code properly, or unplugged that box they didn't think was important

But unfortunately the logistical effects on all the flights is going to take longer to sort.

Looks like LGW is moving for departures, we're starting to see departures ex-LHR...

Fingers crossed..but the backlog won't be pretty.

I work in cyber security and there are a whole host of other reasons for the glitch before I’d consider a cyber attack.

It would be an extremely difficult system to get access to and, while the “rewards” would be huge the possibility of success is extremely low. Attackers are much more likely to go after utilities, banking etc.

I was stuck in similar one 3 years ago - although end of August
DD is currently stuck on a plane at Manchester airport - been told likely to be cancelled - which is more than a bit annoying as I’m waiting for her and DGD at the other end!

Redundant systems and cyber recovery runbooks are actually designed to restore things very quickly in the event of an outage, for whatever reason, so again no indication either way as to cause. The delays are the result of the backlog even a short glitch/hack would put into a system like ATS. No hysteria here, just calm, rational logic from someone that designs such solutions, which react quickly to an outage, from whatever cause. It doesn't relaly matter to the OPs DH and other passengers, the important thing is the ATC system halted as designed when something went wrong - human error, technical issue, cyber incident - rest is just recovery and resetting the system.

The Israel timing makes me think there has been some sort of deliberate interference here but, again, who knows.

My DH works at Manchester. He text a couple of hours ago to say he had just been on a plane and was speaking to the pilot. They were all boarded and ready to go and been told they are 45th in the queue. He said they had another 6 planes all boarded and waiting for take off slots. Poor passengers and crew.

For those interested in arrivals into either Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted it's still not good news - From Eurocontrol,.
times GMT...Hopefully they'll improve.

Aerodromes:

EGGW (London Luton)
Arrivals regulated at a recovery rate due to ATC Equipment (Data processing issues).
High delays.

EGKK (London Gatwick)
Arrivals regulated at a reduced rate due to ATC Equipment (Data processing issues).
Aerodrome not available for arrivals between 1500-2200.
High delays

EGLL (London Heathrow)
Arrivals regulated at a reduced rate due to ATC Equipment (Data processing issues).
Aerodrome not available for arrivals between 1400-2200.
High delays

EGLC (London City)
Arrivals regulated at a recovery rate due to ATC Equipment (Data processing issues).
High delays.

EGSS (London Stansted)
Arrivals regulated at a reduced rate due to ATC Equipment (Data processing issues).
Aerodrome not available for arrivals between 1700-2200.
High delays.

My friend is currently stuck at Heathrow - they have been sitting on the plane for 5 hours but have just been told to deplane. Luckily she has friends in the area to stay with but they don't know when she can continue her journey. It's a mess.

6E001 Mumbai to Heathrow diverted to Amsterdam
BA198 Mumbai diverted to Amsterdam
CI081 Taipei to Heathrow diverted to Frankfurt
TK1971 Istanbul to Heathrow diverted to Brussels
SQ 308 Singapore to Heathrow diverted to Paris

DD just been told flight cancelled - no idea about rescheduling as yet - not offered a hotel just go home n wait for news