Air traffic control system fails to take-off

Thousands of travellers were left stranded at Zurich yesterday after the recently unveiled air traffic control system crashed.

The problems first appeared in the early hours of Tuesday morning not long after the national air traffic control service, Swisscontrol, moved buildings and its revamped IT system went live.

Kurt Russ, head of Swisscontrol in Zurich, said the system had worked well initially but as the capacity of planes increased, more problems surfaced. The panic increased after the screens blacked out leaving air traffic controllers without radar contact to handle incoming airplanes.

A spokesman for Kloten airport called it "another bad day" for the airport that deals with 50,000 passengers daily.

SAirGroup airline - which uses Zurich as its hub - called the computer glitch an embarrassment, claiming it has already caused the cancellation of 16 flights and made many more run at least two hours late.