‘Technical issue’ disrupts UK flights: Here's what we know so far
29 August 2023
On Monday 28 August, the UK’s National Air Traffic Service (NATS) reported that a “technical issue” across important IT networks had grounded hundreds of flights.
NATS was forced to limit the movement of aircraft due to a malfunction in its automated flight plan processing system. This necessitated manual handling of flight plans, leading to flight delays and cancellations.
Juliet Kennedy, Operations Director for NATS, said: “The issue we had earlier meant that our automatic system which provides controllers with details of every aircraft and its route wasn’t working. Instead, to manage safety, we had to limit the number of flights we could manage.”
“Our absolute priority is safety, and we’ll be investigating very thoroughly what happened,” she added.
Although the systems were recovered at 3.15pm the same day, Kennedy confirmed that “it will take some time for flights to return to normal.”
Ministers are working with NATS to resolve the issue. Transport Secretary Mark Harper is advising passengers to familiarise themselves with the UK Civil Aviation Authority's guidelines on passenger rights, to ensure that they can claim compensation.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman added: “Engineers are looking into the case right now as we speak to ascertain the cause and remedy the problem. They are working intensively…and I advise people to contact their airline providers if they need any further information or support.”
Multiple UK airports and airlines were impacted by the issue, including Heathrow where thousands of passengers were left waiting for hours in the terminals.
Oseloka Obiora, Chief Technology Officer at RiverSafe, commented: “Downtime in industries such as aviation causes incredible disruption, as we’ve seen by flights being grounded and major delays, so it is vital that organisations have observability to monitor their entire network environment.
“Having visibility over the condition of networks, infrastructure and applications based on data outputs can ensure that IT teams are able to better identify and resolve issues faster.”
“Through observability, IT teams can monitor the unknown, enabling them to be better prepared for unexpected issues that arise within a network, particularly those that are complex or across distributed systems.
“Effective network visibility through observability can be the difference between hours and days’ worth of delays in the aviation industry.”
While the root cause of the technical issue remains undisclosed, the Government has not ruled out the possibility of a cyberattack. Recent incidents of cyberattacks targeting air traffic control systems in Europe have heightened concerns. In April, pro-Russian cyber hackers in April targeted Eurocontrol, the organiser of commercial traffic in the European Union, although they failed to affect any flights. Investigations are ongoing to determine whether external factors played a role in the disruption.
The Liberal Democrats have urged the government to convene an immediate COBRA meeting, while the Labour's Shadow Transport Secretary said the disruption was "extremely concerning".