New Zealand was forced to ground all commercial and private airplanes Tuesday after a glitch at the country's air traffic control system.
The glitch caused enormous hours of delays and cancellations for both domestic and international flights, said Airways New Zealand, according to Agence France-Presse.
The glitch lasted more than two hours and radar was completely off for air traffic controllers to use. There were no reports of injuries or damages on planes, the government agency assured.
All flights were prohibited from taking off and those planes that were already mid air landed via "visual manual separation" (with the use of radio contact and eyesight) as a result, said the Civil Aviation Authority.
"Today's fault was potentially quite serious. There's emergency procedures which kick in, but it's a pretty stressful situation," said Lisa Williams, a spokesperson for the New Zealand Airline Pilots' Association, in an interview with Bloomberg.
The country has seven international airports in total and there are more than one million flights every year.
