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Report: Engineer’s password glitch made ATC meltdown worse
The air traffic control meltdown which disrupted hundreds of thousands in 2023 was made much worse by a password snafu.
It impacted flights for days causing unprecedented disruption at UK airports.
The just published CAA report says an engineer working from home was unable to verify a password leading to hours lost in trying to fix the IT outage.
An engineer was working from home and the password ‘could not be readily verified due to the architecture of the system.’
The engineer then travelled to the NATS operations centre which caused a further 90- minute delay.
By this time the outage was already three hours old.
The report said assistance from the flight planning system manufacturer Frequentis Comsoft, was ‘not sought for more than four hours after the initial event.’
The report recommended NATS roster a Level 2 engineer onsite during busy periods to avoid response delays.
The system meltdown happened on a Bank Holiday, one of the busy travel days of the year.
It led to a £100m cost to airlines in refunds, rebooking and associated costs such as accommodation and alternative travel expenses.
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Editor for TravelMole North America and Asia pacific regions. Ray is a highly experienced (15+ years) skilled journalist and editor predominantly in travel, hospitality and lifestyle working with a huge number of major market-leading brands. He has also cover in-depth news, interviews and features in general business, finance, tech and geopolitical issues for a select few major news outlets and publishers.
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