The UK Civil Aviation Authority confirmed on Friday 25 September that it has launched a formal independent review into the air traffic control failure that disrupted flights nationwide, including at Bristol Airport, on 8 September. The review was requested by Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander after the incident caused more than 2,000 flights to be delayed, cancelled or diverted across the UK.
The CAA published the terms of reference for the review on its website on Friday. It said the review will examine the causes of the disruption, assess the impact on passengers, and identify what further steps are needed to strengthen confidence in the resilience of the UK's air traffic system. A preliminary report from NATS, published on 18 September, attributed the outage to a software defect in its flight planning systems.
Crucially for Bristol passengers, the CAA confirmed the review will also take into account a second, separate NATS technical issue on 21 September, which caused further cancellations and delays of up to two hours at Bristol Airport, including cancelled flights to Barcelona, Nice and Edinburgh. Bristol Airport was among the airports hit hardest by that second fault, alongside Glasgow, Aberdeen, Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool, London City and Belfast City.
As part of the review, the CAA will look at NATS' plans to renew and modernise its critical operational systems, including its business continuity arrangements, how well recommendations from previous reviews have been carried out, and the effectiveness of the CAA's own regulatory oversight. An independent ch