The air traffic control centre of Belgium shut down all the flights across the country following a glitch in its data system.Now the system is running again but it will take a maximum of two hours for operations to go back to normal.
No planes were allowed to land or take off anywhere for about two hours. Belgocontrol tweeted that it was imposing a “clear sky” until the glitch was solved. It said “there is a problem loading flight data” but did not provide further details.
Dominique Dehaene, of Belgocontrol, told that it is a very specific problem and it was no longer sure that all information of flights was correct.
There were dozens of flights cancelled, including links to and from Birmingham and Edinburgh.
The technical failure happened on one of the busiest days of the year. Friday is expected to see a record number of flights in the skies of Europe.
Last year Brussels international airport saw nearly 25m passengers, while 7.7m passed through Charleroi Airport. The airline hubs operate about 650 and 140 flights a day, respectively. Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, runs about 1,299 a day.
Tags: air traffic, Belgium, edinburgh
