Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has slammed, as a “whitewash”, the preliminary report into last month’s UK air traffic control (ATC) system failure, which caused widespread flight disruption.
Thousands of flights – either flying into, out of, or over, the UK – were cancelled just over a week ago after Britain’s ATC controller the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) reported a major outage. The chaos spread across the Irish Sea with all major Irish airports reporting flight delays and disruption as a knock-on effect of the technical issues.
Now, Mr O’Leary has heavily criticised the findings of the initial review into the matter; saying it presents “false figures” about flight cancellations and is “factually inaccurate”.
Ryanair said Eurocontrol has already confirmed “over 2,000” fewer flights flew over the UK that day, despite NATS claiming the total number of cancellations was 1,500. Ryanair also said NATS’ claim of just 575 delays is “nonsense”, with Ryanair, alone, having to delay over 1,000 flights.
Ryanair group CEO, Michael O’Leary, said: “This Preliminary NATS Report is factually inaccurate. It ridiculously understates the number of flights that were cancelled or delayed through the NATS system failure on Monday 28th August last. In Ryanair’s case, we suffered over 370 flight cancellations (over 63,000 passengers), and more than 1,500 flight delays over the 2 days (Monday and Tuesday over 270,000 passengers delayed). This whitewash report, which understates the number of flights cancellations and flight delays, fails to explain why 1 inaccurate flight plan brought down not just the NATS ATC system, but also the backup system.
“NATS should explain why its backup system failed, and what they are doing to introduce an effective backup system, rather than the rubbish they have at the moment. They should also explain why their 2nd line engineering team was sitting at home (operating “remotely to reduce travel time”), instead of being on site and on the job.
“Finally, we do not accept NATS claim that it is “not within remit” to provide cost reimbursement to customers. Ryanair pays NATS almost €100m per annum for an ATC service that is repeatedly short staffed and on the 28thAugust, collapsed altogether. The least NATS could and should do is to reimburse its airline customers for the tens of millions of pounds they have spent reimbursing passengers for their hotel, meals and transport expenses, which were entirely due to NATS system failure, and NATS backup system failure on Monday 28th August last.“
Mr O’Leary called for UK Transport Minister Mark Harper to directly intervene if NATS fails to reimburse its customers for expenses.
“This report, which is full of false figures about flight cancellations and delays, and avoids any explanation of why NATS backup system failed so spectacularly will not solve this problem unless NATS accepts responsibility for its incompetence and reimburses airlines and passengers for the avoidable right to care expenses they suffered due to NATS failure on Monday 28th August last,” Mr O’Leary added.
