Britain18 September, 20262 min read
Nats Says Millisecond Software Defect Grounded Thousands of Flights Across UK Airports
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A millisecond software defect in UK air traffic systems caused data corruption. The outage grounded or cancelled over 2,000 flights across UK airports.
6 outlets told this the same way.
Millisecond defect grounds flights
A software defect affecting the system underpinning UK air space management caused widespread travel chaos earlier this month, with Nats saying the problem happened "in the space of a millisecond" and led to corrupted data. Nats said the failure resulted in more than 2,000 flights being cancelled and hundreds of thousands of passengers affected, with flights in and out of the UK's main airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton and Glasgow.
The disruption took days to completely resolve because of the number of planes and crew left out of place, after a system restart that did not start until just after 3:15pm and restrictions on UK airspace not lifted until 7:30pm. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander called the disruption "completely unacceptable" and said a Civil Aviation Authority review was underway, while Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe apologised to those affected and said "At no point last week was safety in question."
Calls for accountability
Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe said in the preliminary report that the incident was "a software issue" and not caused by any "incorrect actions" by either military or civil operators, as the glitch on Sept. 8 was blamed for the cancellation of over 2,000 flights.
Rolfe apologised again for the chaos and told the BBC that "It's our job to get people where they want to go, quickly and without delay and we are devastated when that goes wrong," while also insisting that the primary role was keeping "our skies safe".
The BBC reported that passengers were angry about how much support they got from airlines and about the fact that they are unlikely to be entitled to compensation because the regulator judges the situation was extraordinary circumstances.
Airlines UK chief executive Tim Alderslade said "Once again, it is passengers who have suffered and airlines who have picked up the pieces - and the tab - of an ATC system failure" and said the group was writing to NATS "to demand immediate compensation for the costs incurred and a credible plan to improve resilience."
Resilience and future fixes
Sky News said the software defect led to corrupted data affecting flight data updates, requiring restrictions, and added that restrictions were put in place across the UK so the National Airspace System could be restarted. The Guardian reported that ministers said the Nats report still left questions unanswered, with Heidi Alexander saying they needed "to urgently understand why this issue was not discovered and fixed before it caused chaos" and tasking the CAA to conduct an independent review.
The Guardian also said the CAA’s review will be published within six months, as it would check Nats’ findings and investigate Nats’ plans to enhance resilience in the future, along with regulatory accountability. Nats said it had invested over £1bn in systems and technology over the past decade and planned to submit plans to the UK CAA to invest another £1bn before the end of 2033, while Rolfe said the issue had been identified and mitigation was in place while a permanent fix was safety tested and deployed.