A technical fault shut Oceania airspace, forcing flights to circle off NZ’s coast, Airways NZ CEO James Young explains.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says his two ministers in charge of transport will “get to the bottom” of what caused an air traffic control outage that disrupted operations for an hour over the weekend.
The Airways software glitch closed oceanic airspace on Saturday and forced five Australia-bound flights to circleoff New Zealand’s coast as operators figured out what the issue was.
Luxon, former chief executive of Air New Zealand, said he had full confidence in the country’s air traffic control system particularly because there was an “abundance of caution” in the aviation system.
“It may have meant people were avoiding oceanic airspace for a period of time, that’s a good thing actually ... if there was a network failure,” Luxon said.
“I’ll make sure that our Minister of Transport and Associate Transport (Minister) get to the bottom of that.”
Associate Transport Minister James Meager said unexpected issues in the country’s air traffic control system were “always a concern.”
“Although, the quick response and fix gives me confidence that the correct procedures are in place for the rare occasions when things don’t work as intended.
“Airways NZ is undertaking a rapid review, and it would be inappropriate for me to comment further until I’ve seen its results.”
Airways provided the following timeline of events to the Herald:
4:25 pm: An issue was identified with the software where flight plans were not displaying correctly.
4:30pm: The system moved to back up.
4:35pm: International traffic due to depart the domestic airspace was held – five aircraft were in a holding pattern for 40 minutes.
4:45pm: All international departures were held.
5:24pm: Normal operations resumed.
An Airways spokesperson said a review would investigate the root cause of the outage and how to prevent it happening again.
“We are working through the investigation process as a priority but are committed to taking the time needed to undertake a thorough and methodical investigation.”
Associate Transport Minister James Meager. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Speaking to Herald NOW’s Ryan Bridge on Monday morning, Airways chief executive James Young said the transfer of flight information data from one system to another “was not working as it should”.
This led air traffic controllers to restrict traffic flows over an extended period.
“It looks like it’s a system issue, and it’s linked into the transfer of the data.
”I don’t have much more to say about it at this point and that is the subject of the investigation.”
Young said the back-up system kicked in almost immediately, but Airways staff had to conduct data checks to ensure all flight plans were correctly loaded into the new system.
Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.
