Air traffic control meltdown could not be fixed because engineer was working from home

Passengers at Belfast International Airport
The incident caused chaos not only in the UK but for flights between Europe and the US - Liam McBurney/PA

A £100 million air traffic control meltdown last summer could not be fixed quickly because a vital support engineer was allowed to work from home.

More than 700,000 passengers were stranded when flights were grounded on Aug 28 last year after National Air Traffic Services (Nats) suffered a technical glitch that crashed essential air traffic control systems.

The four-hour outage was worsened because a software support engineer who could have fixed the problem was working from home.

An inquiry set up by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the regulator, found that Nats had rostered a support engineer to be on call working from home rather than on site that day, despite it being one of the busiest of the year in terms of passenger numbers.

The report detailed how, when the air traffic control systems failed, a junior engineer on site was unable to fix the problem. A more senior engineer, who could have restarted the crashed computer systems, was an hour and a half away, extending the incident. The systems are designed so that they can only be restarted on site.

Nats should consider rostering a level 2 engineer on site during busy periods such as the summer, the CAA inquiry found.

It acknowledged this would be a “significant” expense, but said it should be viewed in the context of the overall cost to the industry and passengers from last summer’s failure, which it estimated at up to £100 million.

Passengers were stranded at Gatwick Airport when the air traffic control meltdown hit on Aug 28 last year
Passengers were stranded at Gatwick Airport when the air traffic control meltdown hit on Aug 28 last year - Carl Court/Getty Images Europe

The report also noted that help from the software company Frequentis Comsoft, which made the Nats system that crashed, was “not sought for more than four hours after the initial event”. A fix was identified by Frequentis Comsoft within 30 minutes of it being contacted.

The CAA inquiry was led by Jeff Halliwell, an independent executive and former boss of Fox’s Biscuits, who is now the chairman of the Government’s Coal Authority board.

He said: “Our report sets out a number of recommendations aimed at improving Nats’ operations and, even more importantly, ways in which 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.”

In the following days, the incident caused chaos not only in the UK but for flights between Europe and the United States. Such flights must pass through UK-controlled airspace over the Atlantic.

The software meltdown was caused by a flight plan submitted by the airline French Bee for a trip between Los Angeles and Paris that was scheduled to pass over the UK.

Cancellations at Heathrow Airport on Aug 28 last year
Cancellations at Heathrow Airport on Aug 28 last year - Alberto Pezzali/AP

Although the flight plan was valid, it contained two waypoints – one in the US and one in France – with identical names that confused Nats’ systems.

About 15 million flight plans had been processed without error before the French Bee flight plan triggered the bug.

There are about 3,000 aviation waypoints around the world with duplicated names. The international waypoint system was first developed decades ago, before the existence of aeroplanes capable of covering thousands of miles in a single flight.

Johan Lundgren, the EasyJet chief executive, said airlines and passengers were “severely let down by Nats” and a failure of this scale “can never be allowed to happen again”.

Michael O’Leary, the Ryanair chief executive, called on Louise Haigh, the Transport Secretary, to “take immediate action to fix Nats’ hopeless service”.

The incident caused chaos at airports
The incident caused chaos at airports - Steve Reigate

A Nats spokesman apologised for the “inconvenience passengers suffered” because of the “very unusual technical incident”.

He said: “Our own internal investigation made 48 recommendations, most of which we have already implemented. These include improving our engagement with our airline and airport customers, our wider contingency and crisis response, and our engineering support processes.

“We fixed the specific issue that caused the problem last year as our first priority and it cannot reoccur. We will study the independent review report very carefully for any recommendations we have not already addressed, and will support their industry-wide recommendations.”

The inquiry noted that a number of affected passengers waited “many weeks, and in some cases months” for airlines to refund their out-of-pocket expenses.

It recommended that the CAA is given the power to “take consumer enforcement action” without going through the courts, which could include the ability to fine airlines.

Ms Haigh said: “My priority is to ensure all passengers feel confident when they fly. That’s why my department will look to introduce reforms, when we can, to provide air travellers with the highest level of protection possible.”