Airlines have intensified their criticism of the UK’s air traffic control system after a second “technical issue” in two weeks caused widespread flight disruption on Monday (21 September).
At least 227 flights were cancelled on Monday because of the problem, according to aviation data specialist Cirium, prompting renewed calls for a major overhaul of UK air traffic control provider NATS.
In a statement, NATS said its Prestwick centre in Scotland experienced a “network issue” early on Monday, disrupting flights across Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England. By mid-morning, NATS said the issue had been fixed and its systems were “running at full capacity”.
EasyJet was the worst-affected airline, with 47 of its 670 scheduled departures cancelled, while British Airways had 12 of its 513 scheduled departures cancelled.
“We are working closely with our customers to recover their residual delays and help get their operations back to normal,” NATS said. It added that Monday’s issue had “nothing to do with the problem we had earlier this month”, when some 2,000 flights were cancelled due to a “technical issue”.
EasyJet said Monday’s incident "once again calls into question the resilience" of the service, according to a BBC report. Ryanair, meanwhile, called for NATS CEO Martin Rolfe to resign “immediately” after more than 140 of its flights were delayed.
“UK passengers cannot continue to suffer repeated disruption because of system failures, inadequate back-up procedures and failed management,” the carrier said in a statement.
Similarly, industry body Airlines UK said passengers and airlines "deserve better" after "yet another NATS failure".
Luke Petherbridge, director of public affairs at UK travel association ABTA, added: “The industry and travelling public will want answers – not only on what has gone wrong, but critically how the system is going to be made more resilient to avoid future outages."