Uncertainty over compensation for air traffic control chaos

Discussions are taking place today to decide whether airlines will be compensated for major flight disruption over the weekend when the UK’s traffic control system broke down.

Hundreds of thousands of passengers in the UK and across the world were hit by cancellations and major delays after a technical glitch caused the NATS internal phone system to fail.

The Civil Aviation Authority, which regulates air traffic control, said it was supporting a review by NATS into what happened and how to prevent it happening again.

"As this was an operational issue for NATS, they will be leading on looking into the exact circumstances of what happened over the weekend and the lessons that can be learned. We will of course provide support to that process," said a spokesman.

The CAA is also in talks with airlines and NATS to discuss what kind of compensation can be provided for the disruption to services.

Airlines pay a fee to NATS for air traffic control services, but in fact NATS is 49% owned by a consortium of UK-based airlines, which means airlines would effectively be partly seeking compensation from themselves. The other 51% is owned by the UK Government.

A spokesman for the CAA said the compensation situation was unclear but a decision could be reached later today or tomorrow.

British Airways said it was too early to say if it would seek compensation for the disruption, while Ryanair said it wasn’t ruling anything out.

"We are more concerned about the causes behind this ATC failure and are awaiting an explanation, particularly into why there was no contingency in place," said Ryanair’s head of communications Robin Kiely.

"While we acknowledge problems can occur, where is the contingency? It’s simply not good enough and the CAA needs to act now."

The weekend’s problems started in the early hours of Saturday morning at NATS’ Area Control centre at Swanwick, Hampshire, when night shift controllers handed over to the day shift.

The nighttime telephone system failed to switch to the daytime system, so additional control positions were not able to operate.

"To be clear, this is a very complex and sophisticated system with more than a million lines of software. This is not simply internal telephones, it is the system that controllers use to speak to other ATC agencies both in the UK and Europe and is the biggest system of its kind in Europe," said NATS.

"This has been a major challenge for our engineering team and for the manufacturer, who has worked closely with us to ensure this complex problem was resolved as quickly as possible while maintaining a safe service."

NATS apologised for the problems, saying contingency measures meant they were able to deliver more than 90% of its normal operation by 7.30pm on Saturday.

Under European regulations, passengers are not able to claim compensation from the airlines as the technical problems are deemed outside of the airlines’ control.

"However, passengers should receive assistance from their airline during disruption – regardless of the reason for the delay and/or cancellation. This assistance includes food, drink and accommodation if passengers are delayed over night," said the CAA.

by Bev Fearis