£100m cost | WFH airport employee's password problems worsened flight delay chaos for 700,000 passengers

An air traffic control meltdown that resulted in over 700,000 delayed passengers was worsened by a password problem for a work-from-home (WFH) employee, a report has revealed.

In August 2023, a glitch caused the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) computer system to collapse. The system failure resulted in over 700,000 passengers having their flights cancelled or delayed.

A Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) investigation into the incident concluded that the issue was exacerbated by an engineer's struggle to log into the system.

The engineer was one of several senior team members working from home over that Bank Holiday weekend, one of the busiest days of the year for UK airports.