Mission Statement: to assist the integration of foreign residents living in Spain
By Letara Draghia •
Updated: 15 Nov 2024 • 0:15 • 2 minutes read
A report by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has revealed that a technical glitch, combined with a password access delay, caused major disruption to UK air travel over the August Bank Holiday in 2023, affecting more than 700,000 passengers.
How a single flight triggered the outage on an August Bank Holiday
The outage began when a flight from Los Angeles to Paris used the three-letter code “DVL,” representing both Deauville in France and Devil’s Lake in North Dakota. This rare code duplication confused the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) system, causing it to enter maintenance mode to prevent processing incorrect data. Within moments, the backup system also encountered the same issue, leaving air traffic controllers to process flights manually.
The CAA report noted that NATS contacted a Level 2 engineer 30 minutes after the fault occurred, but a password verification problem prevented the engineer from accessing the system remotely. As a result, the engineer had to travel onsite, which delayed the recovery by nearly three hours. Full functionality wasn’t restored until 14:30 that day.
The impact on passengers and airlines, August 28-29, 2023
The technical glitch and subsequent delay resulted in over 2,000 cancelled flights on August 28-29, affecting around 300,000 passengers.
Approximately 95,000 additional travellers experienced significant delays, while others faced shorter disruptions. The report estimates the cost of the disruption to airlines and passengers at £75-100 million (€90-120 million).
The incident involved major airlines including British Airways, easyJet, Jet2, Ryanair, TUI, Virgin Atlantic, and Wizz Air.
easyJet Chief Executive Johan Lundgren expressed frustration, saying, “Airlines and passengers were severely let down by NATS due to its failure of resilience and lack of planning. Airlines were then left picking up the pieces and costs, which ran into millions,” as reported by the BBC.
NATS’ response and future measures to avoid delays
Following the incident, NATS has implemented many of the CAA’s recommendations, including improved crisis planning, increased onsite engineering, better remote troubleshooting, and enhanced passenger protections. A NATS spokesperson apologised, acknowledging the inconvenience and confirming that the specific glitch had been permanently fixed.
This incident serves as a reminder for British expats and frequent travellers to prepare for unexpected disruptions when flying to and from the UK.
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Part-time writer, wife, and mother from the UK. Living an enjoyable life in southern Spain.
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