Airlines are seeking answers from air traffic control (ATC) provider Nats after a technical hiccup in the ATC system led to the cancellation of over 150 flights across the UK. Thousands of passengers attempting to travel both in and out of the country were met with significant disruption on Wednesday afternoon.
By 10pm on Wednesday, 84 departures and 71 arrivals had been cancelled at UK airports, with Heathrow Airport in London seeing the highest number of cancellations. A number of inbound flights were also rerouted to various European cities, according to data from aviation analytics firm Cirium.
EasyJet’s chief operating officer David Morgan said: “It’s extremely disappointing to see an ATC failure once again causing disruption to our customers at this busy and important time of year for travel. While our priority today is supporting our customers, we will want to understand from Nats what steps they are taking to ensure issues don’t continue.”
Ryanair has called for the resignation of Nats’ Chief Executive Martin Rolfe following the fault, claiming that ‘no lessons have been learnt’ since the system outage in August 2023. The airline’s chief operating officer Neal McMahon said: “It is outrageous that passengers are once again being hit with delays and disruption due to Martin Rolfe’s continued mismanagement of Nats.
“It is clear that no lessons have been learnt since the August 2023 Nats system outage, and passengers continue to suffer as a result of Martin Rolfe’s incompetence.”
Over 700,000 passengers suffered disruption when flights were grounded at UK airports on August 28 2023 when Nats suffered a technical glitch while processing a flight plan.
Mr McMahon continued: “If Nats CEO Martin Rolfe fails to resign on the back of this latest Nats system outage that has disrupted thousands of passengers yet again, then UK transport minister Heidi Alexander must act without delay to remove Martin Rolfe and deliver urgent reform of Nats’ shambolic ATC service, so that airlines and passengers are no longer forced to endure these preventable delays caused by persistent Nats failures.”
The Department for Transport (DfT) pointed out that the Transport Secretary does not have any direct control over Nats and has no powers on staffing decisions. Nats has been approached for comment.
The Liberal Democrats have called for a comprehensive investigation into the glitch. The party’s leader Sir Ed Davey said: “It is utterly unacceptable that after a major disruption just two years ago, air traffic control has once again been hit by a technical fault.
“The Government should launch an urgent investigation to ensure the system is fit for purpose, including ruling out hostile action as a cause.” Meanwhile, a DfT spokesperson said the department is ‘working closely’ with Nats to understand the cause of the glitch and the ‘implications for the resilience systems in place’.
The ‘technical issue’ responsible for the disruption was at Nats’ control centre in Swanwick, Hampshire, according to the company. The firm first announced issues around 4pm on Wednesday, and an hour later updated that systems were back up and running, with departures resuming at all airports.
John Carr, a 35-year-old chiropodist from Stourbridge, was en route to Norway with friends to assist in setting up his brother’s wedding, where he was set to be the best man, when he discovered post-check-in that his flight had been cancelled.
Speaking to the PA news agency at Heathrow Airport, he said: “I’m pretty gutted. We’ve got loads of stuff in the suitcases to set up the venue, because we’re obviously flying to Norway. We’ve got the wedding rehearsal to do. It’s quite stressful.”
He said they did not receive any warning of the cancellation before it happened. “We had no idea,” Mr Carr told PA. “There was nothing that the airport had said out on the speaker phones, or anything like that. There was no warning from them or the airline that said it was cancelled. It’s rubbish. There’s nothing we can do.
“We don’t know what we’re going to do tonight in terms of accommodation. We have put our cars in special car compounds for the next six days.” Another passenger, Baptiste, who did not want to give his full name, said he was told his flight had been cancelled while on the tarmac.
He is travelling home to France with his family and told PA: “We have no information. When we arrived, we were stopped on the tarmac and in the plane. We learned that our flight had been cancelled.
“We’re going to Geneva in Switzerland, so we’re trying to find a flight for tomorrow and a hotel.”
