EUROCONTROL outage causes flight delays across Europe

Eurocontrol says a failure of its air traffic management software, the second in 20 years, is now fixed, but could delay ~15,000 flights in Europe

EUROCONTROL very much regrets the disruption that has been caused to passengers and airlines due to today’s outage of the Enhanced Tactical Flow Management System (ETFMS).
The contingency procedures put in place ensured that safety was not compromised at any time.
As of 18.00 UTC, following the resumption of the ETFMS, the EUROCONTROL Network Manager has restarted normal flow management operations. This has been done after extensive internal testing and in coordination with airports, airlines and air traffic control across Europe and beyond.

In over 20 years of operation, the ETFMS has only had one other outage which occurred in 2001. The system currently manages up to 36,000 flights a day.

Source Eurocontrol