NATS September outage cost UK economy about £33m, report says
Original title: NATS Air Traffic Control Failure Cost UK Economy £33m
A legacy National Airspace System defect, not an attack, cancelled 1,152 flights and disrupted about 450,000 passengers.
The Cyber Monitoring Centre said a September IT failure at UK National Air Traffic Services cost the economy around £33m and affected 70 domestic organizations. Its modelled range reaches £42m, or £76m if overseas airlines and 1,800 cancelled flights are included. The CMC said a previously unknown defect in legacy National Airspace System software corrupted flight data; all UK departures stopped, and NATS later used manual fallback. The centre said the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill would not have prevented the failure, though it may improve reporting.
Unconfirmed: Cost figures are CMC estimates; the upper bounds of £42m and £76m are modelled ranges, not confirmed losses.
- CMC published the estimate on November 4 and put the central cost near £33m ($44m).
- About 450,000 passengers faced cancellations or delays of more than two hours.
- Corrupted data appeared at 10am; all UK departures stopped at 12:45pm.
- The flight data system was restored in three-and-a-half hours, but restrictions lasted into the evening.
- CMC said outage risk stays higher while NATS relies on legacy systems.
- Products
- National Airspace System
- Organizations
- National Air Traffic ServicesCyber Monitoring Centre
- Countries
- United Kingdom
From the original article
2 min read at infosecurity-magazine.com
Cyber Monitoring Centre report claims an IT failure at the UK’s NATS air traffic services provider cost over £30m
By Phil Muncaster · infosecurity-magazine.com
A short excerpt; the article and its images belong to the publisher. Summary, key facts and assessment above are AI-written from the article and can be wrong.