Airlines and the wider travel industry are calling for compensation from the UK’s air traffic control body after a technical issue caused cancellations and delays to UK flights for a second time this month.
Jet2 CEO Steve Heapy warned he ‘will be sending another bill’ to NATS (National Air Traffic Service) after at least 227 flights were cancelled yesterday, according to aviation analytics company Cirium.
The latest disruption came just days after NATS (the National Air Traffic Service) published its report into the 8 September failure, which affected more than 2,000 flights.
Steve said: “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?”
He added: “What customers and airlines need now is action, accountability and proper resilience.”
“Our teams will do what they always do in these situations, which is continue to do everything possible to look after customers and recover operations, but it is unacceptable that airlines and customers are left to pick up the pieces when these recurring failures happen. Make no mistake, we are counting the cost of this disruption and will be sending another bill to NATS.”
TUI said the 8 September failure disrupted the travel plans of around 25,000 of its customers and left the company with ‘millions of pounds in additional expenses’.
The operator said its teams worked ‘around the clock’ to support customers, including securing accommodation, providing welfare assistance and operating special repatriation flights.
TUI said it had sought reimbursement from NATS for the costs incurred in caring for customers, but this had been refused.
TUI Airline COO Tilman Reinshagen said: “Airlines are legally required to look after passengers when disruption occurs, regardless of who is responsible. Yet when the disruption is caused by the failure of critical national infrastructure, airlines are left to absorb the cost while those responsible face limited consequences.
“With today’s disruption, this is now the fourth major NATS-related disruption event in four years. Customers and airlines are entitled to expect far greater resilience from a provider of critical national infrastructure.”
TUI called for ‘more meaningful penalties for failure’ and an ‘effective route for airlines to recover costs when critical infrastructure breaks down’.
Meanwhile Ryanair COO Neal McMahon has repeated calls for NATS CEO Martin Rolfe to resign, for failing to provide a resilient air traffic service.
With more than 140 Ryanair flights delayed due to yesterday’s issue, Neal said: “After the August 2023 collapse, Martin Rolfe assured Parliament that it was a ‘once-in-a-lifetime event’. Then NATS collapsed again on 8 Sept, disrupting more than 2,000 flights.
“Now, just 13 days later, the same flight data processing system has failed once more. How many times must UK passengers suffer disruption before Martin Rolfe is replaced by somebody competent?”
ABTA Director of Public Affairs Luke Petherbridge added: “It’s simply not good enough. 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.”
He echoed calls for renumeration, saying: “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.”
Advantage Travel Partnership CEO Julia Lo Bue-Said also called for improvements following the 8 September failure. “The findings from this failure must now translate into meaningful improvements, and we need NATS, alongside Government and the CAA to ensure that the lessons from this incident translate into meaningful improvements in resilience and contingency planning,” she said.
Airlines UK Chief Executive Tim Alderslade 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 system is critical national infrastructure and it must be resilient enough to keep people moving.”
The head of the trade body added: “Passengers and airlines deserve better and the independent CAA report, together with the forthcoming Civil Aviation Bill, must address the underlying weaknesses in the system so that these failures stop happening.”
The latest disruption, described as a ‘technical issue’ came less than two weeks after the 8 September failure, which was attributed to a software defect in NATS’ flight-processing system. NATS said the two events are unrelated.
