The air traffic control failure looks like cock-up rather than conspiracy

Spectator

30-07-2025

The most remarkable thing about today's air traffic control failure, which has led to at least 45 flights being cancelled and many more disrupted, is how few people are bothering even to question whether this could be the work of hackers employed by a foreign power. In recent years almost every systems failure that afflicts UK infrastructure has caused speculation that the Russians or Chinese are to blame – followed by the gradual realisation that, no, we did this to ourselves through our own incompetence.
The Liberal Democrats did put out a statement demanding that the government instigate an investigation, with ruling out foreign sabotage being one of its objectives. But that elicited about as much interest as every other press release from Ed Davey's office.
For most of us, today's failure is one more step towards the realisation that our lives are increasingly at the mercy of computer systems which even the people who build and run them often fail fully to understand. This will almost certainly get far worse as artificial intelligence (AI) is built into these systems – as, by definition, AI is capable of itself making changes to how a system operates.
Today's failure has echoes of what happened over the August bank holiday in 2023 when 700,000 passengers had their travel plans disrupted, and which ended up costing airlines £65 million. No hostile power was involved. The Civil Aviation Authority's final report into the incident, published last year, concluded that it was caused by the flight plan of a single airliner which was not even taking off or landing in Britain.
Rather, it was a flight from Los Angeles to Paris which passed through UK airspace. The air traffic control system was confused because the three‑letter code for its proposed exit point from UK airspace, DVL, for Deauville in Normandy, was the same as that for an earlier waypoint which the plane had passed on its journey: Devil's Lake, North Dakota. Thus the plane seemed to be proposing to exit UK airspace several hours before it entered it. To avoid giving air traffic controllers duff information, the whole system went into maintenance mode. To compound the problems, the 'level 2' engineer who was required to fix the problem was on call but not present at the National Air Traffic Control Services' HQ in Swanwick, Hampshire, and it took him 90 minutes to get into work.
Given the many millions that it cost the aviation industry, you might think it would be worth having a qualified engineer on site all the time. Yet remarkably, the CAA report concluded: 'The panel is of the view that, whilst enhancing the roster to provide for a Level 2 engineer to be available at all times may not be justified on grounds of either safety or cost, there is a case for making such an enhancement during the busier summer period, and other such times as seem appropriate.' What does it say about the priorities of the industry when the perfume shops at Heathrow seem to be more adequately staffed than air traffic control?
We have yet to hear what the CAA makes of today's systems breakdown, but one thing is for sure: it is not going to enhance Britain's reputation as a modern country. Rather, it speaks once more of our ageing infrastructure. We have a Prime Minister who talks about AI solving all our problems – even filling in the potholes which blot our increasingly desiccated roads – yet the reality is that we are becoming increasingly prone to this kind of systems failure, and that there is very little we are doing about it. Hackers employed by hostile states no doubt do exist and will become an increasing threat, but at the moment they are not really getting a look‑in – cock‑ups are outrunning the conspirators.