The boss of the UK’s National Air Traffic Services (NATS) has assured the aviation industry that the problem that caused the IT crash in August has been fixed.

Martin Rolfe, NATS chief executive, told the Airlines 2023 conference in London this week that the crisis refocused him and the organisation on how critical the organisation is.

And he was able to make the following commitment: “The problem we saw was fixed, it’s fixed for good, and it won’t happen again.”

A NATS preliminary report into the problem has confirmed that safety was never compromised.

UK aviation regulator, the CAA, has “identified an issue with a flight plan processing sub-system called Flight Plan Reception Suite Automated – Replacement (FPRSA-R).”

The report stated: “A small but important part of NATS’ overall air traffic control technical infrastructure, it was found to have encountered an extremely rare set of circumstances presented by a flight plan that included two identically named, but separate waypoint markers outside of UK airspace

“This led to a ‘critical exception’ whereby both the primary system and its backup entered a fail-safe mode.”

Rofe said because the problem occurred at a critical period and although it was quickly dealt with by NATS it had severe repercussions for airlines for days afterwards.

“Had it happened at 6pm we would not have talked about it, it would have gone entirely unnoticed,” he said. “Had it happened in November it probably would not have been so much of an issue.”

Rolfe warned although the specific problem has been fixed that does not rule out the possibility of something else happening in the future.

What can be done in such circumstances to limit the impact will ‘hopefully’ come out of the CAA review of the incident, added Rolfe.

“The public expect us to be perfect as an industry,” he added, “which is really curious. I don’t think they expect the rail or roads to be perfect.

“But they expect us to operate the perfect service. It’s incredibly complicated and it’s not always going to be perfect. If you look at it, we do offer a pretty good service.

“They do have a lot of good experience in airports and, actually, a lot of people do still like flying.

“Why, then something goes wrong in the UK everybody starts arguing amongst themselves and start undermining public confidence. It would be nice if we did not do that.”

Rolfe said air traffic in the UK has recovered from the pandemic and is 12% up on last year. He said the UK is “extremely lucky” to be geographically at the “crossroads to aviation”.

But he warned this is based on finite airspace that will only become busier. Today a bust day in UK skies see 8,000 to 9,000 flights, but this is estimated to grow to 38,000 by 2040.

This rise will include new users of airspace like urban mobility services and space operators.

A new generation military aircraft are also requiring more airspace for training flights while geopolitical events like the war in Ukraine has reduced airspace availability.

“Any infrastructure is only as useful as its resilience and reliability. We are adding infrastructure to an already complicated and congested airspace.

“If we do not modernise that air space we are not going to reap the rewards. We are going to have to put a lot more effort into pre-planning that infrastructure in the UK and beyond.”

Rolfe added: “The more infrastructure we put in place the more likely these things [disruption like on August 28] are to happen and the bigger impact they have when they do happen.”