How engineer’s password problem worsened air traffic meltdown for 700,000 passengers

One engineer’s password problems made it more difficult to resolve the IT fault which paralysed UK air traffic control and grounded hundreds of flights last year.

The bank holiday plans of more than 700,000 travellers turned into a nightmare on August 28 last year when Britain’s air traffic control agency, Nats, suffered an IT glitch.

The defect led to thousands of tourists being stranded across the UK and holiday destinations abroad after flights were grounded as Nats air traffic controllers had to manually input flight plans.

It hit at the worst possible time as the number of flight departures was set to be 10% higher than in the same period the year before.

Footage showed exhausted passengers laying on airport floors as thousands faced more than an 12 hour delay.

The computer glitch happened when staff were processing a flight plan.

But an inquiry set up by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has now found that an engineer’s password problems made the situation trickier to solve.

The report found that Nats had scheduled a level 2 engineer to work home on call rather than on-site on the day the meltdown struck – despite it being one of the busiest flight days of the year for passengers.

Instead, a more junior level 1 engineer, who was working on-site at the Nats HQ in Swanwick, Hampshire, started doing checks as soon as the automatic flight planning systems failed at 8.32am.

When they attempted to contact the more senior level 2 engineer 34 minutes later, they could not access the system.

This was because the level 2 engineer’s password login details ‘could not be readily verified due to the architecture of the system,’ the report said.

As they struggled to solve the glitch, more and more passengers arriving at airports faced red and orange notices on the departure and arrivals boards.

Eventually, the engineers agreed to go to the control centre on-site after the remove intervention options failed to work.

It took a further one-and-a-half hours for them to arrive – three hours and 15 minutes after the incident began.

The report also found that the assistance was not sought from the manufacturer of the system, Frequentis Comsoft, for ‘more than four hours after the initial event.’

How airlines have reacted?

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

Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary called on Transport Secretary Louise Haigh to ‘take immediate action to fix Nats’ hopeless service,’ starting by sacking its ‘overpaid and underperforming’ chief executive Martin Rolfe.

Some aviation organisations said it took too long for them to be informed of the glitch, with some claiming they first heard of the issues in the media.

Hayley Lees, who was due to fly home from Nice Airport on the bank holiday, told Metro previously: ‘At check-in, we were the ones who had to tell the staff what the situation was in the UK, they were totally oblivious.

‘We were told to go and come back at 2.30pm, when the check-in desk said we’d just have to wait. At that point the delay was up to 13 hours.’

Some passengers said they were left out of pocket for months as they waited for refunds.

The system failure, which Nats labelled ‘very unusual technical incident,’ meant the rate of flights which could be processed dropped from up to 800 per hour to 60.

To make matters worse, Eurocontrol, which coordinates ATC in Europe, was not alerted until 10.43am – more than two hours after the incident was spotted.

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

He went on: ‘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.’

Ms Haigh said in response to the inquiry: ‘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.’

In July, another IT system failure wreaked havoc during the summer holidays.

Airports, banks, supermarkets and hospitals faced severe disruption to services after an update from the IT system CrowdStrike failed.

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