European flight system outage not down to external interference

BERLIN, April 4 (Reuters) - A computer failure that resultedin thousands of flight delays across Europe on Tuesday was notcaused by outside interference, the network manager said.

Eurocontrol, which is responsible for the flow of trafficacross Europe's skies, is carrying out an investigation into theoutage of the ETFMS flight planning processing system thataffected passengers across the region.

The failure of the ETFMS on Tuesday morning meant flightplans were lost and departures had to be restricted fromairports across the region. The system was back up and runningby 1800 GMT on Tuesday.

"The trigger event was an incorrect link between the testingof a new software release and the live operations system,"Eurocontrol said on Wednesday. "We are confident that there wasno outside interference."

It said measures had been put in place to ensure it wouldnot happen again.

The ETFMS system, which manages up to 36,000 flights a day,has only ever failed once before, in 2001, Eurocontrol said.

Eurocontrol had estimated that around half of Tuesday's29,500 flights would be affected but said on Wednesday it couldnot yet provide exact figures on the impact.(Reporting by Victoria BryanEditing by Maria Sheahan)