A millisecond-long software glitch may have led to widespread disruption of air traffic in the United Kingdom in early September, when more than 2,000 flights were canceled or rescheduled, according to a report by the UK’s National Air Traffic Services (NATS).

The incident occurred on September 8. A technical failure in the National Airspace System (NAS), which is responsible for air transportation in the United Kingdom, led to more than 2,000 flights being canceled, delayed, or diverted.

According to the preliminary findings of the investigation, the system suspended processing a manual request to assign an aircraft code because it received a message about a higher-priority task. Processing was not subsequently resumed properly, which damaged the output data and affected some subsequent flight data updates. “All of this happened within a millisecond,” NATS reported.

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