Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander says she will ‘leave absolutely no stone unturned’ to find out what caused this week’s national air traffic control failure that grounded more than 2,000 flights.
Confirming she had tasked the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) with an independent review, she added: “I am clear that passengers should not have to face this disruption.”
NATS, which manages air traffic control in the UK, confirmed that Tuesday’s outage was caused by a technical issue at its Swanage centre. It will be providing a report on the incident to the CAA shortly.
The CAA has up to six months to report back to the Transport Secretary with its findings.
This week’s incident follows an air traffic control outage over the August Bank Holiday in 2023, which left 700,000 passengers stranded.
“I do think we do need to ask tough questions on the resilience of NATS’ systems, ask questions about progress for planned upgrades and think about consumer redress issues as well,” the Transport Secretary told MPs.
The CAA said that, as the law currently stands, the thousands of passengers affected by this week’s disruption are unlikely to be able to claim compensation under Regulation UK261.
It said cancellations were likely to be considered ‘exceptional circumstances’, which removes responsibility from the airlines.
In the meantime, operators and agents have been working round the clock to support customers, rebooking flights, holidays and sorting overnight accommodation where flights have been cancelled or delayed.
One agent, Greig Horabin of Just Ask Travel, told Travel Gossip’s sister publication Indulge that he paid £649 for a couple to overnight at the Hilton Hotel at London’s Heathrow Airport after their flight to the Maldives was cancelled.
Another agent, Donna Gilbert of Travel Counsellors, had a client travelling to Egypt for IVF treatment who was ‘distraught’ when her British Airways flight was cancelled. “I managed to book her on a late evening flight via Qatar and she eventually got to Cairo at lunchtime today and straight to the clinic,” said Donna yesterday. “She was over the moon that she managed to get to Cairo.”
By Wednesday afternoon, BA said it had rebooked flights for ‘the vast majority’ of its customers. The airline said it expects to operate a normal schedule today.
