The problems were caused by Windows 3.1 (Picture Microsoft)

Nervous flyers probably shouldn’t read this – Orly airport in France recently saw dozens of flights grounded, and admitted that the problem stemmed from the fact that air traffic controllers were using Windows 3.1.

For the unininitiated, Windows 3.1 is from the early Nineties and – you’d think – barely capable of running a cash machine, let alone an air traffic control system.

The delays began on Saturday November after the system broke down – and the secretary general of a French air traffic controller union said the problem was with air-traffic software running on Windows 3.1.

‘The issue with a system that old is that people don’t like to do maintenance work,’ Alexandre Fiacre, secretary general of the UNSA-IESSA air traffic controller union, told Vice.




‘Furthermore, we are starting to lose the expertise [to deal] with that type of operating system. In Paris, we have only three specialists who can deal with DECOR-related issues.’

MORE: Man upgrades to Windows 10 – it shows his wife his entire porn collection

The French Transportation Ministry vowed to upgrade the systems by 2017.