UK air traffic control failure cost up to GBP100mn, finds review

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/>