The chaos caused by the failure of the UK’s air traffic control network in August 2023 cost airlines and consumers as much as £100mn, according to a report that called for the industry to improve how it handles major disruption. An independent report commissioned by the Civil Aviation Authority made more than 30 recommendations for changes to how the industry operates, including better communication between airlines and the air traffic controller and beefed up consumer protections. The regulator found that 700,000 passengers were hit by delays or cancellations caused by the meltdown, and costs for airlines, passengers and others were in the region of GBP75mn to GBP100mn. The bank holiday disruption was caused by the inability of IT systems at National Air Traffic Services (Nats) to process flight plan data for a flight from Los Angeles to Paris. “The aviation sector as a whole should work together more closely to ensure that, if something like this does ever happen again, passengers are better looked after,” said former consumer industries executive Jeff Halliwell, who led the review. The report, released on Thursday, found the same set of technical problems were unlikely to recur. But it outlined how chaos spread from the control centre at Nats to airports across the UK, and detailed a series of issues that exacerbated the problems. These included senior engineers at Nats being on call from home rather than in the office on a public holiday, and its IT systems rejecting one engineer’s password. Airlines were highly critical of the information they received from Nats, saying there had also been a lack of pre-planning and training across the aviation ecosystem for such disruption, the review found. Relations between Nats, a public-private partnership owned by a group of airlines, including British Airways and easyJet, pension funds and the UK government, and its airline customers have worsened over the past 18 months. <br/>
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An engineer's password problem hampered efforts to resolve Bank Holiday airport chaos caused by a flight data fault, a report has said. More than 700,000 passengers suffered cancellations and delays in August 2023 due to the computer shutdown at NATS, the UK's air traffic control service. The engineer was unable to reset the system from home and arrived at work more than three hours after the incident began, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said. NATS said it would review its resilience plans and had ensured the fault could not happen again. A single flight from Los Angeles to Paris triggered the failure on Monday 28 August, the CAA report confirmed. Air traffic control systems handling the flight were confused by a duplicate code - DVL - representing both Deauville in France and Devil's Lake in North Dakota, USA. The failure was detected at 08:30 BST at NATS headquarters in Swanwick, Hampshire, which contacted the engineer 30 minutes later, the report added. However, it said “the password login details of the Level 2 engineer could not be readily verified due to the architecture of the system", which was not restored until 14:30. More than 2,000 flights were cancelled on 28 and 29 August, causing "chaotic conditions" at overcrowded airports, the CAA reported. It said the total cost of the incident to passengers and air operators was between GBP75m and BP100m. In a list of recommendations, it said NATS should review its arrangements to manage significant disruption as well as its communication with airlines, remote working policies, and software.<br/>
One of the innovations at this year's Paris Olympics was supposed to be an electric flying taxi service. Germany's Volocopter promised its electric-powered, two-seater aircraft, the VoloCity, would be ferrying passengers around the city. It never happened. Instead the company ran demonstration flights. While missing that deadline was embarrassing, behind the scenes a more serious issue was playing out - Volocopter was urgently trying to raise fresh investment to keep the firm going. Talks to borrow E100m from the government failed in April. Now hopes are pinned on China's Geely, which is in talks to take an 85% stake in Volocopter in return for $95m of funding, according to a Bloomberg report. The deal could mean that any future manufacturing would be moved to China. Volocopter is one of dozens of companies around the world developing an electric vertical take-off and landing (EVTOL) aircraft. Their machines promise the flexibility of a helicopter, but without the cost, noise and emissions. However, faced with the massive cost of getting such novel aircraft approved by regulators and then building up manufacturing capabilities, some investors are bailing out.<br/>
More than 30 flight companies in Russia, which drive around a quarter of its total air traffic, are on course to go bankrupt in 2025. The Russian news outlet Izvestia reported that three dozen small and medium-sized airlines are at risk of bankruptcy after the country's economy was described as being at "burnout point." It was reported that the airlines have been struggling with a growing pile-up of debt in relation to foreign aircraft leases. Airlines lease aircraft when they are looking to expand the number of planes they have under their wing, but cannot afford to pay the full cost. The lease then allows the airline to use planes belonging to other airlines, at a certain cost, without having to pay the full cost to own it completely. According to Simple Flying, airlines experiencing financial difficulty are more likely to make lease deals, as the cash becomes more valuable for their short term survival. When sanctions were imposed on Russia in 2022 at the start of its conflict with Ukraine, Western countries barred their airspace to Russia's airlines and foreign airlines cut their commercial ties to them. This meant that many airlines stopped transferring lease payments to Russian aircraft following the imposition of sanctions, meaning the Russian airlines began accumulating debt.<br/>
The trade portion of China’s largest air show in Zhuhai wrapped up on a rainy Thursday, with the secretary of Russia’s Security Council visiting days after the Russian-made Su-57 stealth jet flew in its first appearance away from home. Military gear was on display in the exhibition hall where it was viewed by Sergei Shoigu, reported state media outlet the Global Times. The former defence minister is in the country for annual strategic security consultations. China demonstrated its pull on the world stage by welcoming a delegation from Saudi Arabia with its first pavilion at the event, as well as its close ties with Russia even as that country is isolated from Western nations and their allies due to its invasion of Ukraine. The air show’s commercial aviation side was much smaller than in previous years, putting military technology in the spotlight. Hardware as varied as air-defence systems, radars, missiles and aircraft packed the grounds indoors and out. The show included the public debut of China’s while a two-seat mockup of its J-20 stealth fighter also caught the spotlight. “Clearly these developments suggest a continued broad modernisation of PLA capabilities to defeat U.S. and allied intervention capability as part of a counter-intervention strategy,” said senior analyst Malcolm Davis at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, referring to the People’s Liberation Army. “They all come together to make Chinese A2AD more lethal and extend its reach.”<br/>