The air traffic control (ATC) meltdown during the August bank holiday has been linked to a “significant lack of pre-planning” and engineers working from home, according to an investigation.
Because of a technical hitch whilst handling a flight plan, close to 750,000 travellers experienced delays when flights were cancelled at UK airports on August 28 last year with National Air Traffic Services (Nats) being the responsible ATC provider. As a result of the error, thousands of Brits’ holidays were ruined.
An initial inquiry report claims that it doesn’t seem there was “any multi-agency rehearsal of the management of an incident of this nature and scale”.
The inquiry panel noted that these rehearsals are normally run in other sectors. As indicated by the preliminary report distributed by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the regulator: “It is clear there is a significant lack of pre-planning and co-ordination for major events and incidents that targets the alleviation and remediation of major incidents.”
The analysis showed that Nats’ engineers’ work shifts depend “primarily” on the work planned, so on public holidays – when maintenance isn’t usually planned – it is common practice for staff members to be standby at distant spaces often at home.
On the day of the ATC malfunction, the necessary full system restart which could not be executed remotely, took the on-call engineer 90 minutes to reach the location and rectify it, as per the report.
The help of a top engineer wasn’t asked for “for more than three hours after the initial failure”, the report said.
Tim Alderslade, who leads Airlines UK, an organisation for UK airlines, spoke out: “This report contains damning evidence that Nats’ basic resilience planning and procedures were wholly inadequate and fell well below the standard that should be expected for national infrastructure of this importance.”
He also said: “We welcome the committee’s plans for further investigation to provide recommendations so that this kind of catastrophic failure is not allowed to happen again.”
The review discovered that Nats’ system for flight plans got confused by two waypoints special spots in the sky with the same names.
Because of this mix-up, the system had a big error and turned off to stop any wrong flight details from reaching the air traffic controllers, the report explained.
Lots of passengers who faced problems had to pay themselves for other flights, food, and places to stay and then they asked the airlines to pay them back even though the airlines are supposed to take care of these things by law.
The people looking into what went wrong found out that some passengers were given the wrong information about their rights, with some airlines giving out leaflets that told passengers “had to make their own plans to get home”.
The panel highlighted the “very considerable” financial burden on passengers, but also pointed out that the “stress and anxiety” was “at least as serious”.
Many travellers were left stranded abroad for several days due to numerous flight cancellations.
The International Air Transport Association (Iata) previously estimated the combined cost to airlines for refunds, rebookings, hotel rooms and refreshments for affected passengers at around £100 million.
Several airlines, including Ryanair, have demanded that Nats should be held responsible for the cost of the disruption it causes.
The review panel expressed “concerns” that Nats’ performance is measured in delay minutes, but does not consider the impact of cancellations and subsequent delays.
The report stated: “It appears inappropriate that (Nats) is likely to achieve almost all of its performance targets in 2023, and to suffer very little financial consequence, after having caused such huge and serious disruption to passengers, as well as considerable costs for airlines, airports and tour operators.”
The inquiry, led by Jeff Halliwell, who has served as a chief executive and non-executive director in roles across the private and public sector, was established by the CAA.
A spokesman for Nats said it “co-operated fully” with the review and will “continue to respond constructively to any further requests to support the panel’s ongoing work”.
The company stated: “We have not waited for the panel’s report to make improvements for handling future events based on learning from the experience of last year.”
“These include a review of our engagement with our airline customers, our wider crisis response and our engineering support processes.”
