UK regulator to review air traffic control outage after airport chaos

London — The United Kingdom’s independent aerospace regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), has been directed to conduct a formal review of the air‑traffic‑control system outage that disrupted services on Tuesday. The incident, which originated from a technical failure in the national flight‑management network, caused delays and cancellations across several major airports, prompting the Department for Transport to request an immediate investigation into the cause and the adequacy of existing safeguards.

The CAA will assess the sequence of events, evaluate the resilience of the affected system and determine whether procedural or hardware deficiencies contributed to the disruption. Findings are expected to be compiled into a report for the transport secretary within the next few weeks, with recommendations aimed at preventing similar outages and ensuring continuity of air‑traffic services.