London’s Heathrow and Gatwick Airports both returned to normal flight operations today following Wednesday’s UK air traffic control system power outage, which led to more than 150 flight cancellations, thousands of passengers disrupted and numerous diverted planes.
The UK transport minister, Heidi Alexander today called the outage an isolated incident and ruled out any foul play, while Britain’s National Air Traffic Service (NATS) apologised to affected passengers.
However, anger is widespread – ranging from the public, to airlines and opposition politicians – as the outage came less than two years after the last major NATS meltdown, which resulted in 700,000 passengers being majorly disrupted.
The Liberal Democrats called on the UK Government to set up an official investigation into the situation.
EasyJet said: “It’s extremely disappointing to see an ATC failure once again causing disruption to our customers at this busy and important time of year for travel.”
Ryanair, meanwhile, has reiterated its call for NATS boss Martin Rolfe to resign.
Ryanair’s Chief Operating Officer, Neal McMahon, said: “It is outrageous that passengers are once again being hit with delays and disruption due to Martin Rolfe’s continued mismanagement of NATS. 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 learnt since the Aug’23 NATS system outage and passengers continue to suffer as a result of Martin Rolfe’s incompetence.
“If NATS CEO Martin Rolfe fails to resign on the back of this latest NATS system outage that has disrupted thousands of passengers yet again, then UK Transport Minister Heidi Alexander must act without delay to remove Martin Rolfe and deliver urgent reform of NATS’s shambolic ATC service, so that airlines and passengers are no longer forced to endure these preventable delays caused by persistent NATS failures.“
