Airlines have criticised the UK’s air traffic control system after a second technical problem in two weeks caused major disruption to UK flights
EasyJet said Monday’s incident “once again calls into question the resilience” of how the service works, while Wizz Air said there was a “national confidence crisis” in National Air Traffic Services (Nats), which runs the UK’s air traffic.
The technical problem at Prestwick in Ayrshire caused disruption at airports across Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England, delaying dozens of flights.
Nats said a “connectivity issue” was to blame for the disruption, and that it had “nothing to do” with a separate software defect at Swanwick that led to the cancellation of 2,000 flights earlier in September.
The underlying issue causing Monday’s disruption has since been resolved, with Nats saying it was running at “full capacity” although officials warned of knock-on effects.
A spokesperson said they were now “focused on working with our customers to recover their residual delays and help get their operations back to normal”.
According to aviation analytics company Cirium, as of 13:45 BST, at least 200 flights had been cancelled or did not fly on Monday. This includes 100 flights scheduled to arrive in the UK and 99 that were due to depart from the UK.
Easyjet was the worst affected airline, with 47 of its 670 scheduled departures cancelled, while British Airways has seen 11 cancellations from its 513 scheduled departures.
The UK Civil Aviation Authority said passengers who had flights disrupted were “unlikely” to be entitled to compensation.
It said the technical issue is “likely to be considered the result of ‘extraordinary circumstances’ under passenger rights rules”, meaning that “although passengers should be looked after by airlines, they are unlikely to be entitled to compensation for delays or cancellations that were directly caused by the incident”.
Industry representative body Airlines UK said both passengers and airlines “deserve better” service after “yet another Nats failure”.
Managing director of Wizz Air UK, Yvonne Moynihan, called for “urgent reform” of Nats, adding that she did not have confidence in its current leadership.
When asked by BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme whether Nats chief Martin Rolfe should resign, Moynihan said: “We need to look at the leadership at the top. But more than that, what are the board of directors doing?”
Jet2 boss Steve Heapy called for “urgent and accountable” action to bolster the UK’s air traffic control infrastructure.
Ryanair reiterated its calls for Rolfe to resign, saying he had failed to deliver” either a reliable system or an effective back-up”. The latest outage affected 140 of the airline’s flights and 25,000 passengers.
British Airways said “yet another technical fault with Nats” was “disappointing”.
