Apparently a regional air traffic control system outage has sharply limited flights around much of northern Europe. This has caused delays for tends of thousands of passengers and close to some 700 flights.

The computer outage at the Maastricht radar facility in the Netherlands lasted about an hour and a half, according to Eurocontrol spokesperson Lucia Pasquini. The delays at the time where expected to last for the rest of the evening.

Eurocontrol, which is based in Brussels, Belgium, estimated that some 700 flights had been affected in total because of the delays. This is expected to add up to some 15,000 to 20,000 minutes of delays. When it is added up like this, people can really see the damage that was caused by the control problem.

A spokesperson for German air traffic control, Axel Raab, said that the problem in the radar facility halted flights above 7,500 meters. This is the same as 24,606 feet. Pilots could choose to fly at lower altitudes if they wish. However, that airspace would become clogged very quickly, as the Masstricht facility handles around 5,500 flights a day.

A spokesperson for Eurocontrol in Maastricht, Fred Koennemann, said that the system experienced a computer problem at about 12:50 GMT. They started recovering gradually about half an hour later. It was all back to full working capacity at 14:30 GMT.

Once again this shows how one small problem can bring down many flights. This one system crash managed to take down 700 flights and cause tons of travelers to have to deal with flight delays. This is one reason why so many people feel that the overall systems need a big upgrade so things like this do not happen.