‘Counting the costs’: Furious airlines hit out after air traffic control fault - which caused LBA delays
“There have been too many incidents, too many reports and too many promises of lessons being learned.”
Furious executives at some of the UK’s biggest airlines have hit out after another air traffic control fault led to widespread disruption - including at Leeds Bradford Airport.
Flights to and from the West Yorkshire airport faced delays on Monday (September 21) morning following a "technical issue” at an air traffic control centre in Scotland. It has since been resolved, it has since been confirmed.
In an update just after 11am, National Air Traffic Control Services (Nats) said in a statement: “The issue in our Prestwick centre is now fixed. We are working with airports and airlines to safely lift air traffic regulations as quickly as we can to minimise any further disruption.
“Passengers should still check the status of their flight with their airline.We apologise for the disruption.”
Earlier a spokesperson for Leeds Bradford Airport said: “The air traffic control service, NATS, is experiencing a technical issue which is impacting flights at airports across the UK, including at LBA.
“Passengers are advised to check with their airline for the latest flight information.
“LBA is working alongside its airline partners to ensure customers are on the move as soon as possible.”
The airport advised that there could be “residual delays” running into the afternoon due to services catching up from the morning.
In a series of furious statements, executives at airlines like Ryanair, EasyJet, Jet2 and more have hit out at NATS. There have even been calls for its chief executive to resign following this latest disruption.
Passengers and airlines “deserve better”, an aviation industry body has said after the second air traffic control issue within two weeks.
Tim Alderslade, chief executive of Airlines UK, said: “Yet another Nats failure is causing delays and disruption for passengers and airlines alike, and comes just days after its report into the most recent major outage.
“The UK’s ATC (air traffic control) system is critical national infrastructure and it must be resilient enough to keep people moving.
“Passengers and airlines deserve better and the independent CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) report, together with the forthcoming Civil Aviation Bill, must address the underlying weaknesses in the system so that these failures stop happening.”
Jet2 has said customers and airlines need “action, accountability and proper resilience” after the latest Nats issue.
Chief executive Steve Heapy said: “This morning’s disruption comes days after Nats published a report into its latest major failure and it is simply not good enough for this critical national infrastructure to keep letting customers down.
“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.”
He continued: “There have been too many incidents, too many reports and too many promises of lessons being learned.
“What customers and airlines need now is action, accountability and proper resilience, and we need it urgently.”
He added: “Make no mistake, we are counting the cost of this disruption and will be sending another bill to Nats.”
EasyJet has said the latest flight disruption “calls into question the resilience of Nats’ systems” after two air traffic control problems within one month.
The airline said in a statement: “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.
“We will do all we can minimise the impact of this for our customers and advise anyone due to fly today to check our flight tracker for the latest information.”
Ryanair has said more than 25,000 of its passengers are expected to be disrupted after the latest air traffic control incident and repeated its called for Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign.
Chief operations officer Neal McMahon said: “Just three days after Nats assured airlines and passengers that it had introduced robust ‘mitigation plans’, its flight data processing system has failed again.
“More than 25,000 Ryanair passengers have already suffered disruption, with over 140 Ryanair flights delayed, yet Nats still cannot tell passengers when this disruption will end.
“Martin Rolfe’s report claimed that another failure was ‘unlikely’ and that Nats could recover more quickly if one occurred. 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.”
He added: “Martin Rolfe has presided over repeated system failures, repeated passenger disruption and repeated failures to deliver an effective back-up system.
“Enough is enough.
“Martin Rolfe should resign today.”