The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has denied that data entered by a military jet was behind an air traffic control meltdown that sparked chaos for passengers at airports this week.
Hundreds of thousands of passengers had their journeys delayed on Tuesday, when the system used by the National Air Traffic Services (Nats) shut down for four hours, resulting in more than 2,000 flights being cancelled.
The Financial Times (FT) has reported the delays may have been the fault of a UK military aircraft. According to the report, four people briefed on the incident claimed the shutdown was caused by a flight plan submitted by the aircraft, which caused a meltdown in air traffic control systems used by Nats.
But the MOD has denied the claims made in the report, saying they did not believe there is “any indication of an error on the part of the military.”
An MOD spokesperson said: “Because it’s subject to a live Nats investigation, which is expected to conclude next week, it would be inappropriate for us to comment any further while that investigation is ongoing.”
Thousands of passengers were left waiting for hours for the technical issue to be fixed (Photo: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)Chief analyst at StrategicAero Research, Saj Ahmad, said the issue may have been the result of the flight plan being “non-conforming” with the Nats system.
He told The i Paper: “Without specific details, it’s hard to know what exactly was submitted and in what way it was “wrong” or erroneous that led to the entire system collapsing.
“It’s like forcibly trying to crash your laptop because there’s a thousand-and-one ways you can do that.
“I suspect that that’s what’s happening here – something in that flight plan submission, in my mind, was clearly a non-conforming one which the NATS system was unable to process – but how that failure led to the entire network collapse is unclear.”
The FT also reported that Nats operations officer Kathryn Leahy called operations managers at numerous airports and airlines to inform them their flight processing system did not have a dedicated backup.
It is claimed this was due to Nats being in the midst of a “complete overhaul of its systems” and because the amount of data it kept meant duplicating it would cost “vast amounts”.
A Nats spokesperson said: “We are continuing to investigate the underlying cause.
“It would be wrong to speculate while that work continues, and a full technical investigation will follow.”
Although the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has started its own independent review of the incident, transport secretary Heidi Alexander has also given Nats chief Martin Rolfe one week to report on the causes of the shutdown.
Alexander said she did “not believe the issue was unavoidable”.
The CAA previously stepped in to investigate Nats in August 2023, when a technical issue caused almost 1,600 flights to be delayed. The CAA report on the incident set out 34 recommendations for Nats to improve its systems, which were said to have been fully implemented.
This latest disruption has led to calls for Rolfe to be fired or resign from his role. Ryanair’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, who was among the first calling for Rolfe to resign said: We don’t need more investigations, we don’t need more reports and we don’t need another parliamentary committee hearing where Martin Rolfe will promise change, will promise resilience and will promise an effective backup system.”
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