An engineer's password problem hampered efforts to resolve Bank Holiday airport chaos caused by a flight data fault, a report has said. More than

Airport chaos made worse by password issue - report

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2024-11-14 22:00:04

An engineer's password problem hampered efforts to resolve Bank Holiday airport chaos caused by a flight data fault, a report has said.

More than 700,000 passengers suffered cancellations and delays in August 2023 due to the computer shutdown at NATS, the UK's air traffic control service.

The engineer was unable to reset the system from home and arrived at work more than three hours after the incident began, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said.

Air traffic control systems handling the flight were confused by a duplicate code - DVL - representing both Deauville in France and Devil's Lake in North Dakota, USA.

The failure was detected at 08:30 BST at NATS headquarters in Swanwick, Hampshire, which contacted the engineer 30 minutes later, the report added.

However, it said “the password login details of the Level 2 engineer could not be readily verified due to the architecture of the system", which was not restored until 14:30.