The air traffic control chaos that hit British airlines last summer was made worse by delays in checking the password of an engineer working from home, an investigation has heard.
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has conducted an investigation into the 2023 disruption – when thousands of passengers remained stranded abroadand their flights were seriously delayed or canceled.
It took place on a public holiday Monday, one of the busiest days of the year in terms of flights, and caused airlines losing around £100m in refunds, rebookings, hotel rooms and refreshments
Widespread disruption erupted when air traffic control provider National Air Traffic Services (NATS) encountered a technical problem while processing a flight plan.
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In its final report into last year’s incident, published on Thursday, the CAA found that a Level 2 engineer was working remotely rather than onsite at NATS headquarters in Swanwick, Hampshire, on August 28.
As soon as the automatic flight planning systems failed at 8:32 a.m., a junior level 1 engineer working on site began checks.
The Level 2 engineer was contacted 34 minutes later, but the report said his password login information “could not be easily verified due to the system architecture.”
It was then agreed that the lead engineer would go to the control center, but it took them another hour and 30 minutes to arrive.
At that point, three hours and fifteen minutes had passed since the incident began.
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The CAA also noted that support from Frequentis Comsoft, which manufactured the automatic flight planning system, “was not requested more than four hours after the initial event.”
The company found a solution to the problem within 30 minutes of contact.
The regulator recommended that NATS consider recruiting a level 2 engineer on site during busy periods such as summer, which they said would be a “significant” expense.
However, the CAA added that the cost had to be seen in “context” of the overall cost of the failure to the industry and passengers.
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Jeff Halliwell, chair of the CAA’s independent review panel, said the incident “represented a major failure on the part of the air traffic control system”.
The regulator’s chief executive, Rob Bishton, added: “It is vital that we learn lessons from any major incident like this. »
A previous CAA report estimated more than 300,000 people suffered cancellations following the problem.
Around 95,000 people experienced delays of more than three hours, and at least 300,000 others were affected by shorter delays, the regulator added.