Airlines criticise air traffic control as second glitch causes more disruption

Airlines have criticised the UK's air traffic control system after a second technical problem in two weeks caused major disruption to UK flights.

EasyJet said Monday's incident "once again calls into question the resilience" of the service, while Wizz Air said there was a "national confidence crisis" in National Air Traffic Services (Nats), which runs the UK's air traffic.

Nats said a "connectivity issue" at Prestwick was behind the disruption across Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England - and had "nothing to do" with a separate software defect at Swanwick earlier this month.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said further issues today "cause even greater concern" about the UK's air traffic control.

When asked by reporters whether he would look to fire the head of Nats, Burnham said "these are clearly serious issues and they need to be fully investigated".

He added that the transport secretary was taking the issues "extremely seriously" and initially it's a matter for her "to get to the bottom of... and why there has been a recurrence."

The underlying issue causing Monday's disruption has since been resolved, with Nats saying it was running at "full capacity" although officials warned of knock-on effects.

A spokesperson said they were now "focused on working with our customers to recover their residual delays and help get their operations back to normal".

More than 150 flights were cancelled at UK airports on Monday - including 140 departures and 137 arrivals, according to aviation analytics company Cirium.

Easyjet was the worst affected airline, with 48 of its 670 scheduled departures cancelled, while British Airways has seen 13 cancellations from its 513 scheduled departures.

The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said passengers who had flights disrupted were "unlikely" to be entitled to compensation.

It said the technical issue is "likely to be considered the result of 'extraordinary circumstances' under passenger rights rules", meaning that "although passengers should be looked after by airlines, they are unlikely to be entitled to compensation for delays or cancellations that were directly caused by the incident".

An independent review by the CAA into the resilience of the UK's air traffic control system is under way and the results will be published "within six months", it said.

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Industry representative body Airlines UK said both passengers and airlines "deserve better" service after "yet another Nats failure".

Managing director of Wizz Air UK, Yvonne Moynihan, called for "urgent reform" of Nats, adding that she did not have confidence in its current leadership.

Asked on BBC Radio 4's World at One programme if Nats chief Martin Rolfe should resign, Moynihan said: "We need to look at the leadership at the top. But more than that, what are the board of directors doing?"

Jet2 boss Steve Heapy called for "urgent and accountable" action to bolster the UK's air traffic control infrastructure.

Ryanair reiterated its calls for Rolfe to resign, saying he had failed to deliver" either a reliable system or an effective back-up". The latest outage affected 140 of the airline's flights and 25,000 passengers.

British Airways said "yet another technical fault with Nats" was "disappointing".

A Nats spokesperson apologised, saying: "In the real world, we accept technology can and sometimes does fail. Our job is minimising disruption where possible.

"What isn't acceptable is any incident where safety is compromised - this is always our first priority."

They added that it was working to return air traffic to normal as quickly as possible and urged passengers to check their flight status with their airline.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander acknowledged the situation was "deeply frustrating" for passengers.

Steve Davies, 74, told the BBC he was "cheesed off with air traffic control" as technical issues with its systems seemed to be "happening a lot".

He and his wife Sadie became stuck at Birmingham airport after being told to disembark their EasyJet flight to Edinburgh on Monday morning.

Nicole McCloskey, from Kilmarnock, had been due to go to Disneyland Paris with her family before their flight was cancelled.

She told the BBC her family got a message to say the flight was delayed while they were travelling to Glasgow airport, but only found out it had been grounded altogether once they arrived.