Beverley Griffiths, senior lecturer in security and resilience at Bucks New University, says lessons can be learned after hundreds of flights were cancelled following a technical issue.
She said: “The confirmation that a cyber attack has been ruled out is an important development, but the incident still highlights the vulnerability of highly complex and interconnected systems.
“The focus now should be on understanding not only what technical problem occurred, but why it was able to cause such widespread disruption, and whether there are lessons around system resilience, redundancy, maintenance and contingency planning.
“Air traffic management is a hugely complex system involving multiple technologies, organisations and suppliers, so failures can have consequences far beyond the original problem. From a resilience perspective, the key issue is not whether systems ever fail, but how effectively they respond and recover when they do.
“For passengers, the disruption is understandably incredibly frustrating, particularly when journeys involve family commitments, business travel or international connections.
“The real test of resilience will be how quickly services can be safely restored, how effectively those affected are supported, and what can be learned to reduce the impact of future incidents.”
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