The passenger experience resulting from the National Air Traffic Services outage in August 2023

14 November 2024

In August 2023 technical issues with the UK air traffic control computer systems operated by National Air Traffic Services (NATS) led to a large number of delayed and cancelled flights. Passengers were left stranded, and many holidays had to be re-booked or abandoned. As a result, the Civil Aviation Authority launched an independent review to understand why the incident happened and what could be done to prevent similar incidents in the future.

As an organisation whose role it is to represent the interests of transport users, Transport Focus has extensive experience in understanding the needs of passengers who find themselves caught up in disruption. The CAA’s independent review panel asked Transport Focus to speak with those who were impacted by the disruption, and to apply our experience to this specific situation.

A summary of the findings from this research is provided in this report and is included as an appendix to the panel’s final report to the CAA.