# The flight plan that brought UK airspace to its knees

DevFeed: [The flight plan that brought UK airspace to its knees](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/the-flight-plan-that-brought-uk-airspace-to-its-knees-12031.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://incident.io/blog/the-flight-plan-that-brought-uk-airspace-to-its-knees>)

Author: Chris Evans

Published: 2024-12-05T09:44:12Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [The incident.io Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/the-incident-io-blog.md>)

Topics: [Flight](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/flight.md>), [bug](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/bug.md>), [Complex Systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/complex-systems.md>), [Incident response](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/incident-response.md>), [Resilience](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/resilience.md>), [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/systems.md>)

Tags: [bug](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/bug.md>), [complex-systems](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/complex-systems.md>), [incident](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/incident.md>), [incident-channel](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/incident-channel.md>), [incident-management](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/incident-management.md>), [incident-response](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/incident-response.md>), [operations](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/operations.md>), [outage](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/outage.md>), [post-mortem](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/post-mortem.md>), [resilience](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/resilience.md>), [slack-incident](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/slack-incident.md>), [software](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/software.md>), [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/systems.md>), [tech](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/tech.md>)

## AI overview

The article examines the August 28, 2023 failure of UK air traffic control systems after a valid flight plan containing duplicate airport codes triggered an edge case in processing software. The primary system and its backup shut down as a safety measure, causing six hours of downtime, major delays, stranded passengers, and manual processing. It explains the roles of EUROCONTROL and NATS, different flight plan formats, and the FPRSA-R subsystem that converts ADEXP messages into NAS messages.

## Source excerpt

On August 28, 2023, a software bug in the UK air traffic control system caused six hours of chaos, reducing air traffic capacity and forcing manual operations. It's a great story of failure, resilience and communications in complex systems.