UK airport chaos live updates: Ryanair boss calls for air traffic chief to resign over Gatwick flight delays
Thousands of passengers flying to and from the UK have had their flights cancelled after a combination of bad weather and air-traffic control staff shortages
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Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has issued fresh calls for the resignation of the chief executive of air traffic control (ATC) provider Nats.
Mr O’Leary urged Martin Rolfe to step down and “allow someone competent” to take over after flights were disrupted at Gatwick Airport on Sunday due to “Nats staff shortages”.
Analysis of data from flight tracking website FlightRadar24 shows 49 departures and 51 arrivals were cancelled on Sunday between 3pm and midnight, affecting more than 16,000 passengers.
“Ryanair again calls on UK Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe to step down and allow someone competent to run an efficient UK ATC service, which airlines and passengers are entitled to expect,” Mr O’Leary said.
“If he won’t go, then (new Transport Secretary) Louise Haigh should sack him.”
Around 3,500 passengers expecting to fly to or from London Gatwick on 20 flights on Monday morning have been grounded. Most are booked on easyJet, which cancelled its first flight of the day, to Ibiza, and six others including links to Naples and Nice.
Passengers were told the cause was “air-traffic control restrictions” outside the airline’s control.
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Nats says it ‘inherited’ staff shortage when appointed by Gatwick in 2022
A spokesperson for Nats said: “We are very sorry for yesterday’s disruption which was also disappointing for our highly professional Gatwick team, who are doing all they can to provide a seamless 24/7 service.
“When Gatwick appointed us to improve their ATC performance and resilience, everyone knew we had inherited a staff shortage that would take time to fix. Controllers must be trained specifically for the Gatwick airport operation and it takes up to 2 years to be certified to safely control aircraft at the world’s busiest single runway airport.
“We have a full training pipeline in place and this year we have more controllers than last year. We are still not as resilient as we need to be, though, which means that short notice absence has an immediate impact on the operation.
“This summer, since April, we have managed more than 124,000 flights at Gatwick, 2.7% up on last year and our service has been fully available over 99% of the time, 24 hours per day, every day.
“Any cancellation is one too many. On the rare occasions when we have had to reduce the flow of traffic at Gatwick, we have done everything possible to minimise disruption.”
Simon Calder: Your best strategy if your British Airways flight is cancelled
Your best strategy if your British Airways flight is cancelled
The Man Who Pays His Way: In a hurry to get somewhere? You may need to pay and reclaim
Flight delays and cancellations caused by poor weather and ATC restrictions
Aviation analytics firm Cirium said a combination of poor weather and ATC restrictions led to a surge in cancellations last week.
A total of 427 departures from UK airports were cancelled.
That represented 2 per cent of all scheduled departures, and was a three-fold increase from the previous week.
Heathrow, the UK’s busiest airport, saw the most cancellations with 165, followed by Gatwick (87) and London City (36).
What flights have been delayed or cancelled?
Around 3,500 passengers expecting to fly to or from London Gatwick on 20 flights on Monday morning have been grounded.
Most are booked on EasyJet, which cancelled its first flight of the day, to Ibiza, and six others including links to Naples and Nice.
Passengers were told the cause was “air-traffic control restrictions” and outside the airline’s control.
The cancellations are in addition to 64 flights grounded by easyJet on Sunday due to short-notice staff shortage in Gatwick’s control tower.
EasyJet said on Sunday evening that it was “extremely disappointed that customers are once again being impacted by this”.
In terms of the sheer scale of disruption over one of the busiest weekends of the year, British Airways passengers trying to fly to or from London Heathrow have been worst affected.
Between Friday and Sunday BA cancelled 240 flights, affecting around 40,000 passengers. On Monday the airline had grounded a further eight departures and arrivals at Heathrow, plus six at Gatwick.
How can you claim if your flight is cancelled or delayed?
Each airline should enable you to fill out an online form, but these are sometimes difficult to track down. The pages for Ryanair, British Airways and EasyJet are below:
- British Airways (click on “Submit a new claim”)
The payment must be made by cheque or bank transfer, except if the airline obtains the prior signed agreement of the passenger to pay with vouchers for future travel.
For example, an airline might offer a 30 per cent uplift if you accept vouchers that are valid for a year – so a choice between £350 in cash or £455-worth of flights.
Aviation minister commits to tackling ‘long overdue’ airspace modernisation
Tackling issues with Europe’s airspace is “long overdue” and will speed up flights, a minister has said.
Aviation minister Mike Kane said UK airspace management is “an analogue system in a digital age”, and improvements will lead to “quicker, quieter, cleaner flights”.
He was speaking at an easyJet sustainability event at Cranfield University, where the airline said inefficient use of airspace contributes to increases in fuel consumption, carbon emissions and flight times.
The carrier described the problem as a “universal issue” across the whole of Europe, but the “greatest inefficiencies” for its operations are in the UK.
Among the causes are aircraft being required to climb in steps after take-off, complex routing, and delaying descents to manage the workload of air traffic control (ATC) staff.
Gatwick says it will work closely with Nats to provide passengers and airlines with a good service
A Gatwick spokeswoman said Nats has “successfully increased the number of air traffic controllers over recent months”.
She went on: “So far this year, London Gatwick has safely handled more than 170,000 flights through Nats, a 4% increase on last year.
“The Nats service has been fully available more than 99.6% of the time, operating 24 hours a day.
“London Gatwick typically has 800 or more flight movements a day from a single runway.
“We will continue to work closely with the Nats leadership team to provide passengers and airlines with a good service.
“London Gatwick would like to apologise to any passengers who experienced disruption yesterday.”
Simon Calder explains what passengers need to know when their flight is cancelled
Writing in his latest The Man Who Pays His Way column, travel correspondent Simon Calder explains what passengers need to know when their flight is cancelled: basically, if you need to get to your destination quickly, you may need to pay for a new flight and reclaim later.
While under European air passengers’ rights rules airlines are supposed to buy a new flight if necessary, this often does not happen.
The reason comes down to two factors: complexity and complacency.
Complexity: the two most obvious alternatives to British Airways are easyJet and Ryanair. BA can delve into the reservations systems for “legacy” carriers such as KLM and Lufthansa and find replacement flights for stranded passengers, often involving connections in Amsterdam, Frankfurt or Munich. But neither of the big low-cost airlines has any interest in opening up their inventory to other carriers – figuring, probably correctly, that they will Hoover up distressed passengers anyway.
- British Airways could in theory set up an operation to find alternative flights manually for stranded travellers. But since during this dose of disruption average “hold times” on the phone lines were close to an hour, the chances of BA funding hundreds more staff to deal with the odd bout of disruption looks slim.
- Complacency: All the UK airlines know that the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is unlikely to take action if they fail in their obligation to provide the “best fit” replacement for a cancelled flight. The CAA has robustly rapped the knuckles of Wizz Air, but that was for failing to deal properly with the “pay and reclaim” process – leaving some passengers many hundreds of pounds out of pocket. But the aviation regulator looks content to allow airlines to shrug off their duty of care, so long as they eventually stump up for the costs of self-service rescue.
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British Airways blames air-traffic control restrictions and bad weather for weekend cancellations
After cancelling more than 250 flights between Friday and Monday – affecting around 40,000 passengers – British Airways has issued a statement pinning responsibility on air-traffic control problems across Europe.
A BA spokesperson said: “We operate hundreds of flights every day without disruption, successfully getting tens of thousands of our customers to where they need to be.
“Along with other airlines, we’ve had to make some small adjustments to our schedule because of air traffic control restrictions caused by adverse weather.
“Whilst the vast majority of our customers will be unaffected, we apologise for any inconvenience caused and our teams are working hard to help get journeys back on track.”
Under passengers’ rights rules, British Airways must provide alternative flights as soon as possible and, if necessary, hotel rooms.
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