UK orders probe into airport system fiasco

LONDON:

Britain has given air traffic control provider NATS a week to investigate a systems failure that halted flights and disrupted hundreds of thousands of passengers, as authorities came under pressure to prevent a repeat of major outages.

Flights resumed at major airports on Wednesday, but disruption continued as airlines struggled to reposition aircraft and crews following Tuesday's hours-long outage, which affected about 2,000 flights and led to hundreds of cancellations.

Transport Minister Heidi Alexander summoned NATS Chief Executive Martin Rolfe to explain the failure. The government ordered him to report on the incident within a week.