Travel associations and airlines are calling for action following a second technical issue involving National Air Traffic Services technology, which resulted in multiple flight delays and cancellations yesterday (Monday 22nd September).
A connectivity issue in the NATS Prestwick Office yesterday resulted in flight delays and the cancellation of several flights across Scotland, Northern England, and Northern Ireland, impacting passengers at all three of Northern Ireland’s airports.
This NATS failing comes just two weeks after airports across the United Kingdom experienced major disruption due to another issue with air traffic control technology. As a result of the disruption, flights from London Heathrow and London Gatwick were grounded for several hours, and multiple airports across the United Kingdom experienced long delays and cancellations.
In the wake of yesterday’s connectivity issue, travel industry figures are calling for the system to be strengthened in a bid to avoid future outages and disruption to travel.
Luke Petherbridge, ABTA’s Director of Public Affairs stated, “This is the second NATS incident to cause disruption in the last fortnight, and fourth in recent years. It’s simply not good enough. 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.”
“These incidents cause inconvenience to travellers and significant financial costs for airlines and the wider travel industry, including additional work and costs for ABTA’s tour operator and travel agent members.”
“As these NATS issues are entirely outside of travel companies’ control, the Government should seriously consider whether NATS should be made to compensate the wider industry for such events.”
Airline figures have echoed the calls for action, with Steve Healy, CEO of Jet2 highlighting in a statement yesterday, “Once again, airlines and customers are being disrupted by yet another NATS issue, and one has to ask: how many more failures do customers and airlines have to deal with? 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.
“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.”
As a result of yesterday’s connectivity issue, easyJet experienced delays and cancellations on flights departing from Northern Ireland’s airports, with a spokesperson reiterating that the air traffic control system failure ‘calls into question the resilience of NATS’ systems and demonstrates the need for firm actions to prevent these repeated failures.’
