Report: Lack of planning exacerbated impact of ATC meltdown
The bank holiday chaos caused by the air traffic control meltdown was made worse due to a lack of multi-agency mitigation planning.
An interim report by an Independent Review Panel into the 28 August 2023 air traffic control failure was published by the CAA.
More than 700,000 passengers were impacted.
This included 300,000 people by cancellations and 95,000 by long delays of more than three hours.
ATC operator NATS said it had already made progress on issues arising from its own internal probe of the incident.
However, the interim report requires further investigation, such as around multi agency communications, the incentive regime for investment and the response by the aviation system.
Jeff Halliwell, Chair of the Independent Review Panel, said: “This interim report sets out the Panel’s work so far in understanding the root causes of the incident.”
“In developing the interim report, the Panel has engaged with a wide range of stakeholders.”
“In order to produce effective recommendations, the Panel has further lines of enquiry.”
The report found the relationships between some aviation sector stakeholders appears to be ‘adversarial.’
“This is not to the benefit of passengers, especially in a crisis situation.”
“It is clear there is a significant lack of pre-planning and co-ordination for major events and incidents.”
On the day of the ATC failure, it took over one hour for the on-call engineer to arrive on-site to perform a requires full system restart, the report said.
This is because engineers are rostered around routine maintenance tasks.
As it was a Bank Holiday, none of these tasks were scheduled.
It is ‘common practice for staff to be available on standby at home.’
“This report contains damning evidence that NATS’ basic resilience planning was wholly inadequate,” said Tim Alderslade, Airlines UK chief.
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