Independent inquiry into Britain's flight chaos

An independent inquiry will be initiated into the air traffic control computer failure which disrupted flights at Britain's airports last week, officials said Monday.

National Air Traffic Services (NATS) has blamed a software glitch at its centre at Swanwick in Hampshire, BBC reported.

The inquiry will look at NATS' handling of the incident and whether lessons were learnt from previous failures.

Later, Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin will be questioned by members of parliament about the incident.

Britain's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has said that it would appoint an independent chair to lead the inquiry, which will take evidence from experts on information technology and air traffic control.

The computer failure caused huge problems at airports around the country Friday -- including delays at Heathrow and Gatwick, where departing flights were grounded.

Heathrow Airport cancelled about 40 flights Saturday before normal services resumed.

It comes a year after a telephone failure at the Hampshire control room which also caused flights to be disrupted -- one of a number of technical hitches to hit the partly-privatised NATS since the Swanwick centre opened in 2002.

The transport secretary said the system failure was "unacceptable" and asked for a full explanation from NATS about what went wrong.