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Britain’s aviation regulator is preparing to launch a probe into the collapse of the country’s air traffic control system at the end of a busy bank holiday weekend as delays continued into a second day, with around 300 more flights cancelled on Tuesday.
The Civil Aviation Authority is in talks with the government about the scope of an inquiry into the failure on Monday, a source familiar with the discussions said, as the National Air Traffic Services (Nats) said initial findings pointed to a flight data issue.
More than a quarter of all flights in and out of the UK were cancelled on the day, and many more delayed, after air traffic controllers severely restricted the number of aircraft arriving and leaving UK airports.
Earlier on Tuesday UK transport secretary Mark Harper said the CAA would have to take “an independent look at it” given the scale of the problem.
“A report will then come to me and we will look at that to see if there are lessons to be learned about reducing the risk of it happening again,” Harper told ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
The failure, which Nats blamed on a “technical issue”, grounded hundreds of flights on one of the busiest days of the year after the system failure left air traffic controllers having to input individual flight plans manually.
Downing Street and Harper both refused to be drawn on media reports that the fault had been sparked by an incorrectly filed flight plan by a French airline.
Martin Rolfe, chief executive of Nats, said in a statement on Tuesday evening that initial investigations had shown the incident “relates to some of the flight data we received”.
The regulator’s systems had 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”.
Nats said earlier that it had a launched a “thorough investigation” into the incident, which it will share with the CAA and the government. The transport secretary must then decide whether to order the CAA to conduct a wider review.
Harper said his priority was to make sure passengers “get where they need to be as quickly as possible”. The government was ready to provide “further appropriate support” to airlines if required.
Nats said its systems were back “operating as normal” on Tuesday but airlines and airports were still dealing with a backlog of passengers which led to further cancellations. Cirium, the aviation analytics group, said that based on early estimates about 5 per cent of daily UK flights had been cancelled, affecting 147 departures and 134 arrivals.
Despite the widespread disruption, passengers are unlikely to be able to claim compensation from airlines as the rules exempt “extraordinary circumstances” such as air traffic control system failures. But airlines will have to offer refunds or book passengers on alternative flights.
British Airways said it was still experiencing “knock-on effects”, but customers travelling on short-haul services had the ability to move their flight to a later date.
EasyJet said most of its flight schedule was operating as planned on Tuesday, but the knock-on impact of the systems failure meant that “some flights this morning were unfortunately unable to operate”. It said it would operate five repatriation flights in the coming days from some of its most popular destinations.
Meanwhile, Michael O’Leary, chief executive of Ryanair, said it was “not acceptable” that Nats had allowed its “computer systems to be taken down and everybody’s flights get cancelled”.
The head of the International Air Transport Association, which represents all the big airlines worldwide, questioned the regulator’s role in the fiasco. “The failure of this essential service is unacceptable and brings into question the oversight of the CAA who are required to review the Nats resilience plan under the terms of its licence,” said Iata director-general Willy Walsh.
He added that the passenger compensation system should be “rebalanced to be fair for all”. “Airlines will bear significant sums in care and assistance charges, on top of the costs of disruption to crew and aircraft schedules,” he said. “But it will cost Nats nothing.”
