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Nats’ operations room at Swanwick


Nats defends handling of ATC meltdown in August


Chief executive tells MPs issue caused by ‘unusual flight plan’. Ian Taylor reports Airline chiefs reported being


The head of UK air traffic control body Nats apologised to MPs for the system meltdown on August bank holiday Monday last week but rejected accusations of serial failings. A one-off hearing by the Transport


Select Committee of MPs shed light on the cause of the disruption on August 28. MPs heard the issue arose at 8.30am when Nats’ system received “an incredibly unusual flight plan” of an aircraft flying from the US to Paris. Both the system and back-up system shut down.


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informed just after 11am. Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe reported: “The system was back up at 2.30pm and everything running by 5pm.” Loganair chief executive Jonathan


Hinkles suggested the problem was a flight plan with duplicate ‘way points’, saying: “It seems very basic. I can’t understand why it took so long to fix.” Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary


claimed: “Nats will explain this was a once-in-a-lifetime event, but all other ATC systems simply reject a duplicate


flight plan. Nats crashed its system and its back-up system and had its engineers working from home.” He dismissed Nats’ initial account


of the events as “a tissue of nonsense, a tissue of lies”. Rolfe told MPs: “We need to know


where every aircraft is flying from and to and the way points in between.” But he said the problem with the unusual flight plan was not just duplicate


Continued on page 46 travelweekly.co.uk


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