Hundreds more flights were cancelled on Tuesday as the fallout from Monday’s UK air traffic control failure continued to disrupt travel, with the government telling airlines to take every step to help stranded passengers.
Many holidaymakers remain unable to return home for several days, and Downing Street said airlines should fulfil their responsibilities to passengers whose flights have been scrapped or delayed.
But airline industry leaders said the government should make the air traffic control service Nats (formerly National Air Traffic Services) bear “responsibility for the fiasco”, as the costs of dealing with the disruption mounted.
About a quarter of million passengers were caught up in the bank holiday chaos when a technical problem at Nats, which runs UK air traffic control systems, severely limited takeoffs and landings for about four hours.
Almost 1,600 flights were cancelled across UK airports on Monday, and a further 300 were cancelled on Tuesday morning alone, with many more delayed for several hours.
Nats reiterated its apology to customers in a statement on Tuesday night that confirmed the disruption had been caused by flight data that had been received.
Its chief executive, Martin Rolfe, said: “Very occasionally technical issues occur that are complex and take longer to resolve. In the event of such an issue our systems are designed to isolate the problem and prioritise continued safe air traffic control.
“This is what happened yesterday. At no point was UK airspace closed, but the number of flights was significantly reduced. Initial investigations into the problem show it relates to some of the flight data we received.
“Our systems, both primary and the backups, responded by suspending automatic processing to ensure that no incorrect safety-related information could be presented to an air traffic controller or impact the rest of the air traffic system. There are no indications that this was a cyber-attack.”
Rishi Sunak said: “I know people will be enormously frustrated by the disruption that’s impacting them … The transport secretary is in constant dialogue with all the industry participants, he will be talking to airlines specifically later today and making sure that they support passengers to get home as quickly as possible.”
The prime minister’s spokesperson said airlines had a responsibility to “get customers back to where they should be”, by either finding alternative travel for cancelled flights, or providing meals and accommodation until a flight departed.
The transport secretary, Mark Harper, told the BBC: “Airlines have a responsibility either to get people back on a flight to get them home or to pay for them to be accommodated … People can pay for reasonable costs themselves and claim back from their airlines.”
But the global airline body Iata said the situation showed the passenger rights system was not fit for purpose.
The organisation’s director general, Willie Walsh, a former British Airways boss, said there had been an “unacceptable failure”, adding: “Nats has crucial questions to answer about their responsibility for this fiasco. Airlines will bear significant sums in care and assistance charges, on top of the costs of disruption to crew and aircraft schedules. But it will cost Nats nothing.”
Flight plans had to be input manually by controllers on Monday to allow air services to continue at all, while engineers struggled for almost four hours to find and fix the fault.
EasyJet said on Tuesday night it was now operating normally, and would be putting on additional “repatriation flights” from holiday destinations later in the week, as well as switching its bigger planes to affected routes to provide more seats.
Harper met industry representatives including Nats, airlines, airports and the aviation regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority, on Tuesday afternoon. He subsequently apologised again for the disruption, expressed gratitude to airlines and promised to offer more support.
He said: “Airlines are clear about their responsibilities to their customers, and I stand ready to provide further appropriate support from the government should the industry request it.”
Harper has ruled out a cyber-attack as a possible cause, but said the CAA would be reporting to him on the incident, adding that it would “take some days to get completely everybody back to where they should be”.
Passengers around Britain and Europe were weighing the costs of the chaos, with some returning to airports to find their flights cancelled for a second day.
Most of the early morning flights operated at Gatwick by easyJet departed several hours later than timetabled.
British Airways cancelled 85 flights on Tuesday and said there would be more on Wednesday, when it would continue to allow passengers free rebooking should they wish to avoid the disruption. It said passengers should continue to check the status of flights before coming to the airport. It was also taking out business class seats on short-haul flights to get more people airborne.
