Cause of UK air traffic chaos revealed in probe after thousands of Brits left stranded for a week
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 in just 20 seconds.
The “one in 15 million” event led to thousands of flights being cancelled and delayed.
The report by the UK’s National Air Traffic Services (NATS) reveals that a flight plan submitted by an unnamed airline on Bank Holiday Monday last week contained two markers on the planned route with the same name but which were 4,000 nautical miles apart.
That meant the NATS computer network could not understand the UK section of the route so it shut down to avoid potentially unsafe information being passed to an air traffic controller.
A backup system did the same, meaning a human had to step in.
As engineers frantically tried to fix the issue, flight plans had to be entered manually meaning the number of flights that UK air traffic control could handle dropped from 400 an hour to 60.
It was nearly ten hours before the system was fully operational again which triggered massive backlogs that took days to clear.
NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe – who faced calls to resign last week after The Sun revealed his pay had doubled this year to £1.3m – apologised and said it had never happened before – and wouldn’t happen again.
He said: "We absolutely understand how disruptive the events over the bank holiday were for people."
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Nats said an "operating instruction" has now been put in place to allow the "prompt recovery" of the system if there is a repeat of these circumstances.
A "permanent software change" to prevent it shutting down in such an event is expected to be implemented in the coming days.
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.
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“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.”
The Civil Aviation Authority has since announced an independent review.