Easyjet and British Airways criticise air traffic control operator on fresh flight chaos
Easyjet and British Airways have questioned the resilience of the UK’s air traffic control system as British airports face another day of delays and disruption following a system failure earlier this month which grounded more than 2000 flights across the country.
The two airlines and Jet2 have said the disruption raises questions over the system used by the National Air Traffic Services (Nats), which confirmed flights have been delayed today in Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England.
Airports in Edinburgh, Belfast and Manchester were today registering delayed flights and urging passengers to check with their airlines.
Nats said today’s issue was unrelated to a software fault earlier this month which triggered chaos across the UK’s airports.
Easyjet raised concerns over the operator of the traffic control operator and warned it was facing more delays today.
“A Nats air traffic control system failure in its Prestwick centre is causing delays to flights with some unable to operate. This, once again, calls into question the resilience of Nats’ systems and demonstrates the need for firm actions to prevent these repeated failures,” EasyJet said.
Jet2 said customers and airlines need “action, accountability and proper resilience” after the latest Nats issue.
The budget airline’s chief executive Steve Heapy said: “It is simply not good enough for this critical national infrastructure to keep letting customers down,” as the disruption comes “days after Nats published a report into its latest major failure.”
“Customers work hard to look forward to their holidays and airlines work hard to deliver those holidays. They should not be repeatedly exposed to delays and disruption because the UK’s air traffic control systems cannot be relied upon,” Heapy said, adding that the airline “is counting the cost of this disruption and will be sending another bill to Nats.”
A British Airways spokesperson said: “Yet another technical fault with Nats means some of our customers are likely to experience disruption to their travel plans today.”
The spokesperson added that “this is disappointing, and while it is an issue that is entirely out of our control, we’re doing everything we can to limit the impact on customers and are keeping them updated.”
The fresh outage will add to pressure on the beleaguered traffic control body after a host of airline chiefs called on its boss, Martin Rolfe, to quit in recent weeks. In a report on the earlier incident on Friday, Nats said it had introduced mitigation plans to prevent similar issues and claimed a recurrence of the same problem was unlikely.
Ryanair, which has already called for Rolfe to step down, doubled down on its calls today.
“Martin Rolfe’s report claimed that another failure was ‘unlikely’ and that NATS could recover more quickly if one occurred,” Ryanair’s chief operations officer, Neal McMahon, said. “Those claims have been exposed as completely worthless. Just three days later, passengers are once again suffering lengthy delays because Nats has failed to deliver either a reliable system or an effective back-up.”
Transport secretary confirms issue resolved
Transport secretary Heidi Alexander said on social media: “There has been a further IT issue affecting Nats.
“Engineers have fixed the problem and systems are resuming. I know this will be deeply frustrating for passengers after the previous issue,” Alexander said.