The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) of the United Kingdom has released a report regarding a malfunction in the aviation control system that occurred on August 28, 2023. This incident resulted in widespread flight disruptions and cancellations, impacting thousands of passengers. The financial losses incurred by airlines totaled approximately £100 million, which includes expenses for refunding tickets, rebooking flights, providing accommodations, and meals.
The issue arose during the peak of the summer season, on a particularly busy day for air travel – a Monday that coincided with a public holiday. The malfunction occurred in an automatic flight planning system operated by the National Air Traffic Services (NATS).
According to the CAA’s investigation, the delay in resolving the malfunction was due to difficulties in quickly verifying the password of a remote engineer. The malfunction was detected at 8:32 in the morning, and although a junior engineer immediately initiated an investigation on-site, it took 34 minutes for a senior engineer working off-site to be contacted. The system’s architecture complicated the process of verifying data.
In an effort to resolve the engineer authentication issue, assistance was sought from the control center in Swanwick, Hampshire. However, it took an additional hour and a half before comprehensive recovery efforts could begin, over three hours after the malfunction initially occurred.
The report highlighted that the manufacturer of the flight planning system, Frequentis Comsoft, was only alerted to the malfunction four hours after its onset. Nonetheless, the company’s specialists managed to rectify the problem within 30 minutes of being informed.
As a recommendation, the regulator advised NATS to ensure the presence of senior-level engineers at the workplace during high-traffic periods, such as the summer season. Despite the significant financial impact, CAA stressed the importance of considering the overall losses incurred by both the aviation industry and passengers in the event of such failures.
As per the report, over 700,000 passengers were affected by the malfunction. Approximately 300,000 passengers experienced flight cancellations, 95,000 faced delays exceeding three hours, and more than 300,000 encountered shorter delays as a consequence of the incident.