The Ministry of Defence has rejected suggestions that a military aircraft played any role in triggering the air traffic control breakdown that paralysed thousands of flights last week.
According to a Financial Times investigation, the chain of events began when a flight plan submitted by a British armed forces aircraft initiated a system malfunction within the National Air Traffic Services infrastructure.
An MoD representative maintained that no fault had been identified on the military side.
The official indicated that further comment would be inappropriate while Nats conducts its own review, which is scheduled for completion the following week.
Nats, the organisation responsible for UK air traffic management, has yet to determine what precipitated the incident.
A company statement advised against speculation until the internal review reaches its conclusions.
The disruption took place on Tuesday, September 8, halting operations for approximately four hours.
The country’s largest hubs bore the brunt of the impact, including Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton, and Glasgow airports.
In total, more than 2,000 services were cancelled while hundreds of thousands of travellers experienced significant delays.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has mandated a separate inquiry to be led by the Civil Aviation Authority, running concurrently with Nats’s own investigation.
Alexander expressed the view that the situation ought to have been preventable.
Regarding financial recompense, carriers are not automatically obligated to provide compensation to passengers when air traffic control systems are the source of disruption.
Nats acknowledged that this represented the third substantial technical failure to occur within a three-year period.
The most severe previous episode happened during the August bank holiday weekend of 2023, when a computer malfunction disrupted journeys for approximately 700,000 individuals.
An additional, smaller-scale failure in 2025 resulted in 150 cancelled services.
The organisation operates under a public-private ownership model.
HM Government controls a 49 percent share, while the balancing interest is held by an investment consortium comprising UK carriers such as British Airways, easyJet, and Virgin Atlantic, in addition to Heathrow Airport and Nats staff members.