Passengers have been given terrible news by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) after hundreds of flights were cancelled or delayed by a massive failure.
A “radar-related issue” caused the air traffic control (ATC) failure that grounded flights across the UK on Wednesday, officials have said.
But the CAA has said that no-one will get compensation for the problem from airlines – because it is out of their control. In a new statement this afternoon on X the CAA said: “Following the NATS system outage, it’s likely that some flights will be disrupted today. We expect airlines to look after passengers, and reimburse them for reasonable expenses incurred
“However, passengers are unlikely to be entitled to compensation if their flight disruption is directly caused by this issue.”
The CAA clarifies on its website: “Under UK law, airlines may have to provide compensation if your flight arrives at its destination more than three hours late. This depends on what caused the delay – if it wasn’t the airline’s fault, don’t expect to receive any compensation.”
Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe was summoned to speak with Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander on Thursday morning, a day after thousands of passengers were disrupted by the technical problem which forced the cancellation of more than 150 flights.
Airlines are demanding an explanation for what happened.
A spokesperson for Nats said: “This was a radar-related issue which was resolved by quickly switching to the back-up system during which time we reduced traffic to ensure safety.
“There is no evidence that this was cyber related.”
The PA news agency understands that the back-up system continues to be used by controllers while investigations continue.
Ms Alexander said: “I have spoken with Nats CEO Martin Rolfe who provided further detail on yesterday’s technical fault.
“This was an isolated event and there is no evidence of malign activity.
“I will continue to receive regular updates.”
The problem happened at Nats’ control centre in Swanwick, Hampshire, and affected the vast majority of England and Wales.
A Government source said the failure lasted around 20 minutes, and the level of disruption was similar to a day with bad weather.
More than 700,000 passengers suffered disruption when flights were grounded at UK airports in August 2023 when Nats suffered a technical glitch while processing a flight plan.
Aviation analytics company Cirium said 84 departures and 71 arrivals were cancelled to or from UK airports up to 10pm on Wednesday.
Several flights were diverted to other European airports.
There was limited disruption on Thursday, with a handful of British Airways flights cancelled because aircraft and crew were out of position.
Heathrow and Gatwick airports said they had resumed normal operations.
Affected passengers are unlikely to be entitled to compensation as the disruption was outside of airlines’ control.
But they will be able to claim for expenses such as a reasonable amount of food and drink, a means to communicate and overnight accommodation if required.
Ryanair called on Mr Rolfe to resign, claiming “no lessons have been learnt” since the August 2023 outage.
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.”
Business minister Gareth Thomas was asked whether Mr Rolfe will be “fired” over the incident.
He told Times Radio: “We are summoning – the Transport Secretary is summoning – in today the chief executive of of Nats to help us get to the bottom of what went wrong yesterday.
“Clearly, an incident happened two years ago and measures were taken then.
“It looks like those measures weren’t enough but we need to get to the bottom of what exactly happened, and conversations will take place today.”
A former industry chief said it is “unrealistic” to expect an air traffic management system with no technical failure.
Graham Lake, former director-general of air traffic management industry association Canso, told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “If you look at the minutes of outage over a period of years, your availability – system availability – is, frankly, very, very good. So I think it’s unrealistic to expect a system where you have no technical failure.
“The failure yesterday was short and sweet, if you like, the recovery was quick – aircraft were operating again very, very quickly.”
