AIR traffic control bosses have revealed what caused a blunder which left thousands of Brit holidaymakers stranded in airports for days.
Summer holidays ended in misery for thousands when a technical fault brought down the UK’s air traffic control system.
Travellers forced to sleep on the floor in Stansted Airport
Passengers at Birmingham Airport last week with flights delayed and cancelled
A statement issued today by NATS said a problem with a flight plan processing system called Flight Plan Reception Suite Automated – Replacement (FPRSA-R) caused the chaos.
They say the system failed due to an an “extremely rare set of circumstances”.
The statement explained: “This led to a ‘critical exception’ whereby both the primary system and its backup entered a fail-safe mode.
“In these circumstances, the system could not reject the flight plan without a clear understanding of what possible impact it may have had.
“Nor could it be allowed through and risk presenting air traffic controllers with incorrect safety critical information.
“On the day, the time taken to recover was driven by the need to identify the problem and the specific data, isolate and remove it in a controlled way, and then test it to ensure it could be returned safely into operation.”
Thousands of holidaymakers were hit by bank holiday travel delays, which started when the “technical issue” grounded flights heading to and from the UK.
Despite the issue being said to have been fixed by the afternoon of Monday, August 28, knock-on disruption massively affected tourists.
Passengers due to fly to Newcastle were seen bunking down on the floor of Palma airport overnight, with their flights already facing huge delays following severe weather problems.
And some holidaymakers were even forced to sleep in trolleys, with one passenger even using a towel to make a tent-like canopy between barriers.
Dozens more cancellations across Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton Airports were announced on Tuesday, August 29, as airlines struggled to recover from the four-hour failure.
In the worst single day’s disruption to UK flying since the Icelandic volcano in 2010, an estimated 200,000 passengers woke up today in unfamiliar surroundings.
Martin Rolfe, chief executive at NATS, said: “Keeping the sky safe is what guides every action we take, and that was our priority during last week’s incident.
“I would like to reiterate my apology for the effects it had on so many people, including our airline and airport customers. Incidents like this are extremely rare and we have put measures in place to ensure it does not happen again.”
The UK Civil Aviation Authority will now independently review the wider issues around the system failure and how NATS responded to the incident.
If there is evidence that suggests NATS may have breached its statutory and licensing obligations, the UK Civil Aviation Authority will take any appropriate steps.
Responding to the NATS preliminary report, Transport Secretary Mark Harper said: “I welcome NATS’ preliminary report outlining the facts of last week’s air traffic control technical failure – particularly the confirmation that there were no safety issues as a result.
“I also welcome the announcement from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) of an independent review to dig deeper into this event and understand whether there are any further steps to be taken to improve the resilience of the air traffic control system.
“Thousands of passengers faced disruption as a result of the failure, with over 1500 flights cancelled and hundreds more delayed. I once again want to echo NATS’s apology to those who were caught up in it, with a technical fix now identified to ensure that such an incident does not recur.
“I will chair a further meeting between NATS, the CAA and the aviation industry tomorrow to allow NATS to present its findings and consider initial feedback from airlines.”