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By TOM LAWRENCE Published: 08:38 BST, 2 April 2025 | Updated: 08:42 BST, 2 April 2025
Ryanair is suing Britain’s air traffic control HQ for £5million after 700,000 passengers had their holidays ruined when a work-from-home engineer could not enter his password.The technician spent more than an hour attempting to log on remotely to fix a glitch at the National Air Traffic Service. He struggled to login remotely because the system had crashed, so it would not accept his password. The specialist eventually got in his car and began heading towards the Southampton HQ on the August 2023 Bank Holiday weekend.However traffic congestion meant his journey took 95 minutes, by which time flights had been grounded around the country.Ryanair claims NATS took three hours to alert the company of the problem, leading to 1,000 of its flights to be delayed or cancelled.The Irish based airline has accused NATS of negligence and is seeking around £4.52million in compensation, plus legal costs and interest on losses, The Sun reported.Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, speaking at the time, criticised NATS engineers for sitting ‘at home in their pyjamas’ on one of the busiest weekends of the year. Ryanair Chief Executive Michael O’Leary criticised NATS engineers for the disruption caused Passengers were stranded overnight at London Gatwick Airport during the disruption leaving many to resort to sleeping on the floor Chaos erupted when the UK’s air traffic control system crashed, and IT engineers were working from home so couldn’t helpHe described the management at NATS as ‘numpties’, saying they were at fault for the ‘collapse’ of the system and had failed to give airlines proper warning. A report by the Civil Aviation Authority last year called for technicians to work from the headquarters permanently. While thousands of holidaymakers were stuck at airports or on the tarmac, advice was sought from an off-site senior engineer, who also did not understand why the system had failed so dramatically.Finally, four hours after the initial incident, someone phoned the system’s German manufacturer, Frequentis Comsoft, and the issue was identified.By the time it was resolved, the backlog was so huge that many passengers did not fly until days later, so holidays were cut short or cancelled completely.The inquiry found the NATS system crashed while trying to process an unusual route plan for a flight from Los Angeles to Paris that would enter UK airspace.This was because two ‘waypoints’ on the journey — Devil’s Lake in North Dakota and Deauville in France — share the same three-letter code.The system became confused because the original flight plan appeared to suggest it would leave UK airspace into Deauville before it had arrived. Passengers queue for check-in in the car park at Manchester Airport’s Terminal One after the air traffic control meltdown ground terminals across the UK to a halt Passengers queue for check-in at Manchester Airport’s Terminal Two during the air traffic control meltdown on August bank holiday in 2023Within 20 seconds of receiving the plan, the main processor and its backup had crashed when they failed to reconcile this apparently-impossible route.Flight plan processing then reverted to a manual system, meaning the number of flights being processed per hour went from 800 down to just 60.The inquiry report said: ‘The impact of the failure was considerable. The CAA has estimated that there were over 700,000 passengers and others who were affected by the failure, often for several days, and this had considerable financial and emotional consequences for them.’
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Ryanair sues air traffic control HQ for £5m after WFH engineer ruined 700,000 passengers’ travel plans because password failed on one of the busiest days of the year
