Airport meltdown that left thousands stranded ‘was caused by engineer working from home whose password failed’
AN airport meltdown that left thousands of travellers stranded was caused by an engineer working from home whose password failed, an inquiry has found.
Some 700,000 passengers were caught up in chaos during August bank holiday last year when a flight-plan glitch caused the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) computer system to collapse.
Planes were unable to take off and land - causing nightmare delays lasting days.
It also cost airlines £100million in compensation pay-outs.
A Civil Aviation Authority inquiry into the incident today found that IT support engineers were allowed to work from home on one of the busiest days of the year.
The disastrous glitch then struck and was made worse by workers being remote.
The engineer assigned to fix the problem struggled to login remotely because the system had crashed and would not accept his password, it was found.
Engineers then spent an hour-and-a-half making their way to the office where they performed a "full system re-start" - which still didn't solve the problem.
Four hours after the incident was first flagged, someone phoned the system's German manufacturer, Frequentis Comsoft, who was able to identify the issue.
As a result, the Civil Aviation Authority today called for senior engineers to be on duty in the NATS offices all times in the hope the problem will not be repeated.
