The body in charge of Britain's air traffic control system was warned four months ago that its plan to deal with technical faults was not clear enough, it has been claimed.
A computer glitch at NATS control centre in Hampshire on Friday led more than 300 flights being cancelled or delayed and travel disruption for thousands of passengers.
The air traffic control organisation NATS said on Saturday that the computer meltdown was sparked by an unprecedented systems failure.
It was the second major problem to hit the Swanwick centre in just over a year.
A report in the Independent on Sunday says the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) warned NATS officials in the summer that they needed to be better prepared to deal with IT problems.
The newspaper also said that experts had warned NATS that a huge redundancy programme might deepen the problem, resulting in serious future meltdowns.
A spokesman for the CAA said: "We said to NATS that the report that they had produced as a result of their investigation into the December failing in 2013 lacked clarity ... and subsequently there was more work done on that."
He was unable to confirm whether or not that report contained information about plans NATS would put into action in the event of a technical failure.
But Business Secretary Vince Cable suggested NATS was using "ancient" computer systems after "skimping" on investment.
He told BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show: "I think the Transport Secretary very sensibly is wanting a report on this on Monday morning to find out what has happened.
"In agencies like NATS, as in the banks and the private sector, they've been skimping on large-scale investment for very many years.
"Often the easy thing to do under financial pressure is to be penny wise and pound foolish and to forego capital investment so they've got very ancient computer systems which then crash.
"We have to maintain a high level of capital investment."
Meanwhile, an MP called for the top boss of NATS to lose his bonuses as a result of Friday's fault.
Richard Deakin, NATS chief executive, said the software glitch was "buried" among millions of lines of code written a quarter of a century ago.
But Labour MP Paul Flynn told The Sunday Times that Mr Deakin earns more than £1m after receiving a 45% pay rise this year.
"I hope after the chaos, which was dreadful, though a rare event, he will have his bonuses stripped from him," he said.
NATS said operations were back to normal on Saturday with only minor delays and cancellations at some of the UK's airports as a result of a backlog.
A statement from NATS said: "Swanwick controller workstations provide a number of tools and services to the controller to enable them to safely control a high volume of air traffic.
"In normal operations the number of workstations in use versus in standby fluctuates with the demands of the traffic being controlled.
"In this instance a transition between the two states caused a failure in the system which has not been seen before.
"The failure meant that the controllers were unable to access all of the data regarding individual flight plans which significantly increases their workload.
"We immediately took steps to reduce the traffic into and out of the UK network. At no time was safety compromised in any way."
Mr Deakin said NATS is investing a "huge amount" in new technology, with £575m set to be spent over the next five years to move towards more resilient, internet-based systems.
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