Ryanair is seeking £5 million in damages from Britain’s air traffic control authority following disruptions affecting approximately 700,000 passengers. The incident occurred because an off-site engineer was unable to log in due to forgetting his password.
The technician tried for over an hour to access the system remotely and resolve a malfunction at the National Air Traffic Service.
He found it difficult to log in from afar as the system had malfunctioned, thus refusing to acknowledge his password.
The specialist finally got into his vehicle and started driving toward the Southampton headquarters during the August 2023 bank holiday weekend.
However, due to traffic jams, his trip lasted for 95 minutes, by which point flights were being canceled across the nation.
Ryanair claims NATS
It took three hours for the company to be notified about the issue.
resulting in 1,000 of its flights being delayed or canceled.
The airline based in Ireland has charged NATS with neglect and is demanding approximately £4.52 million as compensation, along with covering legal expenses and interest on damages.
The Sun reported
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The CEO of Ryanair, Michael O’Leary, criticized NATS engineers during a discussion at the time, saying they were lounging ‘in their pajamas at home’ over one of the most hectic holiday periods of the year.
He characterized the managers at NATS as ‘numpties,’ stating that they were responsible for the ‘breakdown’ of the system and had neglected to provide adequate warnings to airlines.
Last year, a report issued by the Civil Aviation Authority urged technicians to operate from the headquarters indefinitely.
As numerous vacationers found themselves stranded at airports or aboard planes, experts turned to a remote senior engineer for guidance. However, this individual also struggled to comprehend the root cause of the systemic failure.
Ultimately, four hours following the original incident, a call was made to Frequentis Comsoft, the system’s German manufacturer, leading to the identification of the problem.
Once resolved, the backlog had grown so large that numerous passengers didn’t board their flights for several days afterward, resulting in vacations being shortened or canceled entirely.
The investigation revealed that the NATS system failed when attempting to
devise an unconventional flight path from Los Angeles to Paris that includes entering British airspace.
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This occurred due to two ‘waypoints’ on the route — Devil’s Lake in North Dakota and Deauville in France — having identical three-letter codes.
The system got perplexed as the initial flight plan seemed to indicate it would exit UK airspace for Deauville even before arriving.
In just 20 seconds after getting the plan, both the primary processor and its backup shut down as they were unable to resolve what seemed like an impossible path.
The flight plan processing subsequently switched back to a manual system, which led to a decrease in the hourly handled flights from 800 to only 60.
The investigation report stated: “The repercussions of the failure were significant. The CAA approximated that more than 700,000 travelers and individuals faced disruptions due to the issue, which persisted for multiple days, leading to substantial financial and emotional impacts.”
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