A British MP has called for bonuses to be “stripped” from a top boss after an unprecedented systems failure at the UK’s national air traffic control centre.
The problem, involving computer code written a quarter of a century ago, was responsible for widespread disruption at British airports.
Richard Deakin, chief executive of Nats, the company responsible for controlling British airspace, said the software glitch was “buried” among millions of lines of code at the site in Swanwick, Hampshire.
Paul Flynn, a Labour MP, spoke out about Deakin’s role. He told The Sunday Times: “I hope after the chaos, which was dreadful, though a rare event, he will have his bonuses stripped from him.”
Deakin earns more than £1 million after receiving a 45 per cent pay rise this year, according to The Sunday Times. Meanwhile, Nats was reportedly warned about the quality of its plans to deal with technical failures. The Independent on Sunday said Nats gave the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) a report earlier this year following major disruption caused by a communications problem last December.
Everything came back online 45 minutes later
The CAA said “themes on avoiding a recurrence” were a “good first step but lack detail and clarity”, the newspaper reported.
Passengers faced travel chaos as dozens of flights at airports around the country were disrupted or cancelled on Friday and early on Saturday. About 40 flights at Heathrow were cancelled before 9.30am, after which the airport said normal service was resumed.
Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin described the disruption as unacceptable, and MP Louise Ellman, chairwoman of the Transport Committee, said McLoughlin will be asked about the incident when he appears before the panel today. Deakin told BBC: “The problem was when we had additional terminals brought into use and we had a software problem that we haven’t seen before which resulted in the computer which looks after the flight plans effectively going offline.
“The good news is of course that everything came back online 45 minutes later, the back-up plans went into action as they should have done, so everything performed normally there, the skies were kept safe.”