Air traffic control: UK flight chaos to continue for days after fault

Holidaymakers heading to and from the UK will face disruption for days after an air traffic fault caused chaos, the transport secretary has warned.

Hundreds of flights were cancelled or delayed due to the technical glitch with the UK’s air traffic system, leaving thousands of people stranded.

The government’s Mark Harper said it will take “some days to get… everybody to where they should be”.

Flight chaos is continuing on Tuesday, airlines and airports have warned.

Heathrow Airport – the world’s busiest two-runway airport – said its schedule remained “significantly disrupted”, while EasyJet said some flights are still “unable to operate”.

Holidaymakers described a nightmare Bank Holiday Monday, with many waiting hours for news of when they might get moving.

National Air Traffic Services (Nats) confirmed the fault just after midday on Monday, before it announced at 15:15 BST that it had identified and remedied the issue.

But it said it would “take some time for flights to return to normal”, they said – as they launched an investigation into what went wrong.

The government is confident there was no cyber attack, Transport Secretary Mr Harper told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday morning – but admitted the timing “was not at all helpful for people”.

“The last time there was something this significant was about a decade ago, so these things do not happen frequently” he said. “It is going to take some days to get completely everybody back to where they should be.”

Aviation expert John Strickland explained the knock-on impact on flight disruption will continue to “ripple on over the next few days”.

“Fortunately it is very uncommon,” Mr Strickland told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “The scale of this one was so significant – instead of minutes it lasted into hours.

“Hours really do have an enormous domino effect.”

Airports and airlines were forced to apologise to travellers for the delays and cancellations, and in some cases have offered passengers full refunds.

London’s Heathrow Airport asked passengers travelling on 29 August to contact their airlines before coming to the airport.

Gatwick said they expect delays and cancellations on Tuesday, while London Luton Airport also said flights across UK airspace remained subject to delays and cancellation and people should check with their airline for the status of their flight.

Aviation analyst Sally Gethin also said the disruption in the aftermath of the technical fault will last for days.

“Airlines will have a major headache now, looking after customers and getting the planes back to some normal schedule again,” she told BBC News.

“I think we are going to see sizable disruption in the coming hours and tomorrow [Monday], and I think for some people there could be a knock-on effect into later this week.”

Passengers recounted how they faced huge disruption as air traffic control had to input routes manually, rather than automatically, because of the fault.

Serena Hamilton at Belfast International Airport said she was likely to miss a heart transplant check-up after her flight to Newcastle-upon-Tyne got cancelled.

“I had a transplant 15 months ago and these appointments are very important,” she told BBC News.

Irene Franklin, 60, said she, her daughter, son-in-law and friends were forced to pay for a hotel after their Delta flight from Heathrow to Texas was cancelled at the last minute.

“It was [saying delayed by] two hours, now it’s cancelled. It’s now not until tomorrow morning at 10,” she said.

Daniela Walther said she was supposed to catch a flight from Heathrow for Stuttgart, Germany, at 17:25, but it was pushed back eight hours.

She added: “I know it’s going to be long but on the other hand I don’t dare to leave because I don’t want to miss information, and I don’t know if I don’t get it on my phone.”

Cricket journalist Rory Dollard and his family are stuck in Bergerac, France and were told it could take up to six days to get home after his Ryanair flight was cancelled.

According to aviation data firm Cirium on Monday afternoon, more than 230 departing fights had been cancelled, which it said was equivalent to 8% of all departures, and 271, or 9%, of incoming flights.

In a statement late on Monday night, Tui reassured its customers that on top of a refund they would be entitled to a “future holiday voucher of £100 per person”.

BA said that there were “significant and unavoidable delays and cancellations” and apologised for the inconvenience caused. It has advised customers who were travelling on short-haul services to check their flight was still running before heading to the airport.

The airline added customers due to travel on Monday and Tuesday may be able to move their flights free of charge to a later date.

The CAA says that an airline has a duty of care to provide food, drink and accommodation if delays stretch overnight.

If a flight is cancelled, passengers should be offered a choice of a refund or alternative travel arrangements at the earlier opportunity.

Nats said it was a “flight planning issue” which had affected the system’s ability to automatically process flight plans.

This meant that flight plans could not be processed at the same volume, “hence the requirement for traffic flow restrictions” for safety.

Operations director Juliet Kennedy apologised for the disruption and announced an investigation into what happened.

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