Airlines take aim at NATS after another outage
Airlines are losing patience over air traffic control mishaps.
Another outage disrupted flights on Wednesday.
This time the outage was brief – only about 20 minutes but the knock-on effect impacted several later flights.
UK Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said ‘continued disruption was expected’ and all travellers should check their current flight status.
On Thursday morning, 10 flights to and from Heathrow Airport were cancelled.
Budget airline Ryanair has long called for NATS CEO Martin Rolfe to resign.
“Yet another ATC system failure has resulted in the closure of UK airspace meaning thousands of passengers’ travel plans have been disrupted. It is clear that no lessons have been learned since the August 2023 NATS system outage,” the airliner said.
EasyJet’s chief operating officer, David Morgan said it was ‘extremely disappointing’ for the ATC to fail again.
“We want to understand what steps they are taking to ensure issues don’t continue.”
NATS said the outage occurred at its Swanwick control centre.
The problem was ‘radar related’.
British Airways said it was forced to reduce flights from 45 an hour to 32 an hour for more than two hours following the glitch.
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Editor for TravelMole North America and Asia pacific regions. Ray is a highly experienced (15+ years) skilled journalist and editor predominantly in travel, hospitality and lifestyle working with a huge number of major market-leading brands. He has also cover in-depth news, interviews and features in general business, finance, tech and geopolitical issues for a select few major news outlets and publishers.
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