Air traffic management NATS’ response
We have apologised very sincerely for what happened on Bank Holiday Monday, the first such disruption we have had in almost 10 years. Many opinions have been expressed about what happened, and will no doubt continue to be. Our investigation is ongoing, and the CAA is carrying out its own independent review, which is due next year.
Up to the end of September, NATS had safely managed more than 1.8 million flights in UK airspace, compared with 1.6 million in the same period last year. Over that same period, we handled more than 23% of European en route traffic with the proportion of European delays attributed to NATS (NERL), as reported by Eurocontrol, just 1.7%. The CAA’s recent announcement simply confirms the pricing that has been in place since 1 January 2023. It also confirms that underlying real prices will remain flat for the next four years against the rate our customers have been paying throughout 2023. Even with the increase, the ATC service we provide 24/7 accounts for just £2.08 of the price of a ticket on average – less than the price of an on-board coffee. The UK’s airspace is amongst the busiest and most complex in the world; our charges reflect not only that, but also the investment required in people and systems for the future, and we consult the airlines to help set those investment priorities.
Error in the air
A NATS IT service failure in August 2023 saw more than 2,000 flights grounded and many more delayed.
On Monday 28 August 2023, what NATS would describe as “an extremely rare set of circumstances” occurred when a flight plan that included two identically named but separate – 4,000 nautical miles apart – waypoint markers outside of UK airspace was encountered by the processing subsystem, the Flight Plan Reception Suite Automated – Replacement. NATS added that something of this kind hadn’t happened before in the five years and more than 15 million flight plans managed by this system. The result, NATS’ preliminary investigation report – released just days after the incident – said, was “a ‘critical exception’ whereby both the primary system and its backup entered a fail-safe mode. […] The system could not reject the flight plan without a clear understanding of what possible impact it may have had. Nor could it be allowed through and risk presenting air traffic controllers with incorrect safety critical information.” It’s important to note both NATS and the CAA say the failure posed no risk to safety, a point
reiterated in NATS’ report. Comforting, but it provides only so much consolation to those affected – carriers and passengers. Beyond the NATS report, the CAA has also initiated an independent review and NATS has apologised for the inconvenience caused. However, that contrition received short shrift from the industry. “NATS has crucial questions to answer about their responsibility for this fiasco,” says the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) European director for operations, safety and security, Giancarlo Buono. “The failure of this essential service is unacceptable, particularly considering the high costs of NATS services.”
The event led to significant disruption for passengers, and dismay and anger across the sector, lifting the lid on what appear to be some long-held concerns, as Buono’s words demonstrate. He notes that the service has spent millions to “supposedly upgrade” systems, but claims that this has “not been directed to the critical areas”. “For many years, NATS has proposed hundreds of millions for so-called ‘legacy escape’ – this appears to be confounded by legacy failure on their behalf,” he says. “The bottom line is that such a mundane technical issue should not cause the collapse of the entire system. It demonstrates the failure to build resilience into the NATS systems.” Kirk Chang, a professor of management and technology at the University of East London, notes similar concerns. “The cause of air traffic control shambles?” he asks, before offering his own thoughts. “A combination of technical glitch and management issue.” He suggests that the latter perhaps played the larger role, adding that he believed the chaos was likely to have been triggered by a series of glitches such as slow data inputs, which Chang described as ‘local units’, delayed data compilation (regional units), prolonged integrated analysis (central units) and poor decision-making (top units). “Having said this,” he continues, “the NATS controllers across four units – local, regional, central and top – should have plenty of opportunities to identify the glitches and make the best intervention in time, such as [through] signal rectification and immediate feedback to the management system.”
For Chang, there are three questions to be answered. Although those units are operated automatically, they’re overseen by humans. So, what roles and functions do their managers play in these glitch-identification-and-repairing moments? Is there sufficient training offered to the unit controllers? And, finally, are there any support and standardised operation procedures (SOP) – a set of written, step-by-step instructions of the processes taken to properly perform a routine – in place for repairing such glitches?
24 Future Airport /
www.futureairport.com
Steve Travelguide/
Shutterstock.com
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