Air traffic control glitch that grounded hundreds of flights 'caused by one military aircraft'

A single military aircraft entering "spurious" flight data reportedly caused the air traffic control outage that left thousands of planes grounded and disrupted travel for hundreds of thousands.

The jet submitted a flight plan which caused several hours of chaos for the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) on Tuesday, it has been said.

Kathryn Leahy, NATS operations director, told industry bosses about the source of the disorder during a briefing on Tuesday evening, an insider said, according to the Financial Times .

More than 2,000 flights had been cancelled within three days as airports across the UK were thrown into turmoil. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told the the House of Commons she believed the outage was avoidable.