Originally Posted by
Private jet
As I recall, Eurocontrol had then/has now, their system totally backed up, duplicated in two different control centres. As others have said, deteriorating infrastructure in the UK (or rather lack of it from the get go), but who pays to improve it & why should they pay???
Would that be the system that failed in 2018 when they thought it had switched to the other centre but hadn't, and because the phones didn't switch over as expected, nobody could ring them to tell them?
NATS has a lot of redundancy and duplication and is currently investing in even more but please read the great explanations by others above as to why it might not always help.