New Zealand Air Traffic Control Failure Likely Caused By Data Transfer Issue

Last weekend New Zealand experienced an hour-long air traffic control failure that disrupted flights, leaving five plans circling and four others unable to take off, according to Radio New Zealand.

The country's sole air traffic service provider, Airways, now says it was caused by a software glitch when flight data was unable to be transferred between systems:
[Airways chief executive James Young told Morning Report] 'We noticed that was not occurring as it should and as a result of that our air traffic controllers took measures to manage traffic, either by holding on the ground or in an air hold.' Airways operated a modern air traffic control system that involved back up systems but Young said they were not instantaneous and it took time to validate flight information data.

'At no point did we lose control of all aircraft. We were able to communicate with all aircraft and we had line of sight of all aircraft,' Young said. He said flights in the New Zealand air space were held, put into a hold with two eventually continuing on and three returning to origin... 'What we couldn't do was process any changes to the flight path during the period of the outage, which lasted for about one hour.'
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