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Mark Harper, the UK’s transport secretary, has said analysis by the UK’s cyber security authorities suggested that yesterday’s air traffic control systems failure was not caused by a computer hack, amid continued disruption.
The number of planes in UK airspace was severely limited for hours on Monday after the flight planning system at National Air Traffic Services, the private company that manages flights in the UK, suffered a technical issue.
Speaking this morning to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Harper said cyber authorities had ruled out external actors as a cause, although he declined to give details of what caused the failure beyond saying there was a “technical issue yesterday morning with the flight planning system”.
He said: "Those people in government who look at these things have looked at it and they are clear it wasn’t a cyber attack."
Harper apologised to people affected by the disruption, which he said will continue through Tuesday as airlines try to get people back to where they were scheduled to be.
"The problem was fixed yesterday afternoon, but the impact of it will continue today. There are some flights obviously not where they should be, and airlines are working very hard now to get their customers back in the position they should be."
"Airlines do have a responsibility, either to get people back on a flight to get them home, or to pay for them to be accommodated and to sort out food and drink as well. If they don’t do it then people can claim for reasonable costs themselves and then claim them back from the airlines."
It is a busy day on the UK’s transport agenda, as London’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) comes into force today. Owners of older and more polluting cars will have to pay £12.50 a day if they want to drive within the expanded zone.
The introduction of the zone has been fought furiously by some people who do not want to pay more, but the capital’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, has said the zone is necessary to reduce deadly air pollution.
The UK’s FTSE 100 stock index has jumped at the opening bell after returning from the bank holiday, in a catch-up move following strong gains in Asia and Wall Street.
In fact, the share prices of every single company in the benchmark index have risen in the opening trades – a relatively rare occurrence. The index was up 1.3% in the first 10 minutes of trading.
The top gainer is the packaging company Bunzl, which is up 3.5% after upgrading its profit forecast.
The agenda
• 2pm BST: US S&P/Case-Shiller house price index (June; previous: -1.7% year-on-year; consensus: -1.3%)
• 3pm BST: US job opening and labor turnover (July; prev.: 9.582m openings; consensus: 9.465m)
We’ll be tracking all the main events throughout the day ... |
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