Sydney radar glitch impacts on Hobart

A RADAR failure at Sydney Airport has had a ripple effect across the country’s aviation network, with Hobart passengers facing flight delays of up to three hours.

The “air traffic control system failure” in Sydney hit about 5am on Monday, resulting in the cancellation of some flights and delaying others.

Power in the traffic systems operations went down, with air traffic control having to revert to a slower, manual process for departing flights.

The technical glitch was resolved by 9am, with the domestic airport “progressively returning to normal operations,” a Sydney Airport spokeswoman confirmed.

“The issue has been addressed but the airport is not at normal capacity. We are working hard to clear the backlog of flights,” Air Services Australia spokeswoman Sarah Fulton said yesterday.

Hobart airport interim chief executive Matt Cocker said there were rolling delays for multiple airlines across several flights in and out of the state capital yesterday but no cancellations.

He said one flight to Melbourne was delayed by almost three hours, with delays between 30 minutes and 2 hours, 50 minutes experienced.

“There were up to threehour delays ... but it was generally well managed by the airlines,” Mr Cocker said.

He expected the delays to have ended by today.