Flights resume after technical issue sends Australian airports into chaos
The technical issue triggered flight delays at three major airports across the country overnight, causing several flights to be disrupted.
All flights have resumed in three major Australia airports after a technical issue with air traffic control communications systems sent terminals into chaos.
Airservices Australia confirmed it was working to address an issue with the systems at its Melbourne Air Traffic Service Centre on Tuesday.
A spokesperson confirmed on Wednesday morning all flights had resumed as normal.
“Airservices Australia has restored communications services overnight after a technical issue affected our ability to process automated flight plans on Tuesday,” they said.
“All traffic management restrictions have been lifted and operations are back to normal.
“We apologise to passengers impacted while we worked through this issue, which caused some delays for flights out of east coast airports and departing Perth on Tuesday evening.”
On Tuesday, an Airservices Australia spokesman said safety, air traffic control and communication between air traffic controllers and aircraft were unaffected.
“The main operational capability being impacted is that we have reverted to manual entering of flight plans in some circumstances,” a spokesman said.
“To maintain safety while we work to rectify the issue, traffic management measures have been implemented at Melbourne, Perth, and Adelaide Airports.”
Arrivals at Melbourne Airport experienced delays for more than an hour from 5pm on Tuesday afternoon while technicians worked to fix the problem.
A spokesperson confirmed the airport was “back to normal operations” on Wednesday.
A Perth Airport spokesman confirmed some arrivals and departures had been delayed.
A spokesperson for Adelaide Airport said all flights had returned to their normal schedule on Wednesday.
They said 15 arrivals were impacted overnight as a result of the technical issue, with an average delay of about 50 minutes.
There were fewer delays for departures and no cancelled flights.
