The association in charge of coordinating European air traffic says it has fixed a previous issue which prompted to flight delays.
Eurocontrol prior said that delays could influence up to half of all flights in Europe – around 15,000 trips.
It said the defective system was restarted at 19:00 GMT, and normal activities had resumed.
Tuesday’s fault was just the second failure in 20 years, Eurocontrol said – the last occurred in 2001.
The unspecified issue was with the Enhanced Tactical Flow Management System, which oversees air traffic by looking at the demand and capacity of various aviation control sectors.
It oversees up to 36,000 flights every day. Somewhere in the range of 29,500 were scheduled on Tuesday when the fault happened.
At the point when the system fizzled, Eurocontrol’s emergency course of action for a failure in the system intentionally lessened the limit of the whole European system by 10%. It additionally included what it calls ” predetermined departure intervals ” at significant air terminals.
In a statement, the group said it “very much regrets the disruption that has been caused to passengers and airlines due to today’s outage.”
“We have never had anything like this before,” a Eurocontrol spokesman told the AFP news agency.
But air traffic control itself was not directly affected, and Eurocontrol said “safety was not compromised at any time”.
Prior in the day, a few European airports had cautioned travelers to expect delays, with Brussels Airport saying it was restricted to only 10 takeoffs every 60 minutes. Schiphol in Amsterdam, Helsinki, and Dublin airports additionally cautioned travelers about delays of differed lengths.
On Tuesday afternoon, Eurocontrol said its alternate course of action would be set up for a few hours, “until we are certain that sufficient data is in the system to allow it to operate completely correctly”.
Eurocontrol reported the system restart later in the day, after what it called broad testing.
It likewise asked carriers to resend any flight planss recorded before 10:26 UTC, which it says were lost in the system failure.
Under the EU law, travelers on delayed flights are normally qualified for remuneration. Be that as it may, an exclusion applies if the delay was caused by an ” extraordinary circumstance ” out of the airline’s control.