GUERNSEY AIRPORT escaped the worst of yesterday’s air traffic control computer failure. The problem at West Drayton Control Centre near Heathrow caused major delays at UK airports into the day.

‘In the end, it was quite a big non-event for us, although not for Heathrow, Gatwick or Manchester, which are probably still recovering,’ said Guernsey air traffic control manager Ray Plant yesterday.

‘When the computer was offline, there were horrendous delays forecast for traffic to London and Manchester areas, but once the computer was back online, they reduced quite drastically. In Guernsey, we had half-hour delays, but it had a huge knock-on effect in the UK.’

The National Air Traffic Service (Nats) flight data processing system failed for an hour at about 6am after overnight testing of an upgrade.

Take-offs were suspended so that controllers could prioritise planes in the air. Safety was unaffected. The system handling the separation of planes in the air continued working during the computer failure.

‘We have to slow everything down or stop – that’s the only way to do things these days. Safety is the name of the game,’ said Mr Plant.

He added that only four flights from Guernsey to the UK were delayed due to the time that the computer failure occurred.

The early flight to Southampton was held up because of a shortage of stands at the city’s airport following the computer failure, but it had departed by 7.30am.

‘It didn’t stop traffic coming here from the south coast, such as Bournemouth, Exeter and Southampton, purely because any traffic could be handed off.

‘Southampton has an area of responsibility – Solent radar – and hands the traffic off direct to Jersey air traffic control, which hands it off to us. There was no involvement for London.’

Exeter was able to do the same with its flight to Guernsey. The aircraft flew below controlled airspace to avoid the need to talk to London.

Nats is investigating the cause of the problem and is said to be planning to spend more than £1bn. on upgrading its system over the next eight years.

An Aurigny spokesman said yesterday afternoon that there were only ‘fractional’ hold-ups due to the computer failure. Stansted was still delayed but only partly due to the ATC problem.

Flybe had also had slight delays, but flights were back on schedule by the afternoon.