Air traffic control issues UK: EasyJet lays on rescue flights as ‘dodgy French flight plan’ blamed for air traffic chaos

How likely is it that your travel plans will be impacted by the travel chaos, that all began with a four-hour failure of the UK’s main air-traffic control system on Monday?

Our travel correspondent Simon Calder will be live on The Independent at 9am on Wednesday 30 August to answer as many questions about cancelled flights, delays, and reimbursements as he can in one hour.

A “frustrated and tired” Scottish drama student was left stranded in Amsterdam Airport overnight when an air traffic control glitch saw his flight cancelled, forcing him to sleep there.

Matthew Creed, a 26-year-old drama student from Harthill, became stuck at Schiphol Amsterdam Airport after his flight with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines to Edinburgh was cancelled.

Tens of thousands more airline passengers suffered flight cancellations on Tuesday due to the knock-on impact of an ATC fault.
Analysis of flight data websites by the PA news agency shows at least 281 flights – including departures and arrivals – were cancelled on Tuesday at the UK’s six busiest airports.

The last week of August is a time of high demand for air travel, especially from returning holidaymakers. Because of the UK’s limited airport infrastructure, especially in southeast England, there is precious little slack in the system: Heathrow and Gatwick are, respectively, the busiest two-runway and single-runway airports in the world.

So the UK’s normally well-regarded air traffic control (ATC) system needed to be working perfectly on bank holiday Monday.

Just before noon on Monday, the company told me: “We are currently experiencing a technical issue and have applied traffic flow restrictions to maintain safety. Engineers are working to find and fix the fault.”

In this analysis, Calder poses some tough questions as he argues that the authorities have some explaining to do.

Aircraft and flight crew are out of position after the severe disruption on bank holiday Monday.

More than 1,200 flights to, from and within the UK were grounded by the failure at Nats, the national air-traffic provider. Around 200,000 people are starting the day where they did not wish to be – with many sleeping overnight at airports.

Read this report from our travel correspondent Simon Calder:

Around 300,000 airline passengers have now been hit by flight cancellations since the hours-long failure of the Nats system on bank holiday Monday. The knock-on effect is set to last for several more days, as under-pressure airlines battle the backlog in a week where millions are already returning to the UK from their summer holidays.

Several sources say the issue may have been caused when a French airline filed a dodgy flight plan that made no digital sense.

Our travel correspondent Simon Calder and Andy Gregory have more:

Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe said in a statement yesterday that there are “no indications” the glitch was caused by a cyber-attack.

Explaining the air traffic control (ATC) fault, Mr Rolfe said: “Very occasionally technical issues occur that are complex and take longer to resolve.

“In the event of such an issue, our systems are designed to isolate the problem and prioritise continued safe air traffic control.
“This is what happened yesterday.

“At no point was UK airspace closed but the number of flights was significantly reduced.

“Initial investigations into the problem show it relates to some of the flight data we received.

“Our systems, both primary and the back-ups, responded by suspending automatic processing to ensure that no incorrect safety-related information could be presented to an air traffic controller or impact the rest of the air traffic system.

“There are no indications that this was a cyber-attack.”

Mr Rolfe added that Nats is working closely with the Civil Aviation Authority to provide a preliminary report to the Transport Secretary on Monday – the conclusions of which will be made public.

The first easyJet repatriation flights returning passengers to the UK following an air traffic control (ATC) fault will set off for London Gatwick as disruption continues.

The failure, which led to a spate of cancellations and delays, was caused by flight data received by National Air Traffic Services (Nats) – with both primary and back-up systems responding by suspending automatic processing.

EasyJet announced it will run five repatriation flights to London Gatwick, with the first two set to take off today.

The airline said: “During this traditionally very busy week for travel, options for returning to the UK are more limited on some routes and so easyJet will be operating five repatriation flights to London Gatwick over the coming days from Palma and Faro on August 30, and Tenerife and Enfidha on August 31 and from Rhodes on September 1.

“We are also operating larger aircraft on key routes including Faro, Ibiza, Dalaman and Tenerife to provide some additional 700 seats this week.”

Despite the issue being fixed on Monday, the major disruption to tightly-packed bank holiday schedules continues to cause chaos in UK flight schedules – with many passengers now facing the prospect of being stuck overseas for more than a week.

Andy Gregory has the full story:

Around 300,000 airline passengers have now been hit by flight cancellations since the hours-long failure of the Nats system on bank holiday Monday. The knock-on effect is set to last for several more days, as under-pressure airlines battle the backlog in a week where millions are already returning to the UK from their summer holidays.

Several sources say the issue may have been caused when a French airline filed a dodgy flight plan that made no digital sense. Instead of the error being rejected, it prompted a shutdown of the entire Nats system – raising questions over how one clerical error could cause such mayhem.

In a statement, the CEO indicated the organisation’s complex IT system defaulted to fail-safe mode when presented with anomalous data.

Mr Rolfe said: “Our systems, both primary and the back-ups, responded by suspending automatic processing to ensure that no incorrect safety-related information could be presented to an air traffic controller or impact the rest of the air traffic system.”

Surely the Nats system should automatically have identified an anomaly and spat out the plan, saying “try again”? Yet instead, the flight plan was ingested and set in train a shutdown of the entire system.

The closest analogy I can come up with is an extremely well-tuned machine – let’s say an aircraft engine – being prone to spanners being thrown into the works.