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A major system outage that occurred on Wednesday led to the grounding of flights across the UK, prompting airlines to seek answers from the air traffic control (ATC) provider NATS. The issue, which NATS has since apologized for, was resolved within 20 minutes by switching to a back-up system. As a result of the outage, more than 150 flights were cancelled, and thousands more faced delays.
Several airlines expressed their disappointment with the situation, with EasyJet describing the error as “extremely disappointing” and a Ryanair executive calling for the resignation of NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe. According to NATS, the problem was “radar-related” and was handled to ensure flight safety, with no evidence pointing towards a cyber-related incident. The government announced that it is collaborating closely with NATS to determine the cause of the disruption.
This recent ATC failure reignites frustrations stemming from a similar incident two years ago, reflecting passengers’ continuing hardships due to what some perceive as mismanagement within NATS. Ryanair’s Neal McMahon criticized Rolfe’s handling of the situation, emphasizing that passengers are once again enduring delays and disruptions as a consequence of what he deems as incompetence. The incident in August 2023 had previously affected over 700,000 passengers and led to the cancellation of more than 500 flights across the UK’s busiest airports.
Passengers affected by the flight disruptions expressed a range of emotions, from anger to frustration. John Carr, attempting to attend his brother’s wedding in Norway, described the experience as stressful but remained hopeful about reaching his destination. Similarly, Julia Lo Bue-Said, chief executive of Advantage Travel Partnership, highlighted the need for robust infrastructure to avoid impacting businesses and travelers. Cirium, a flight data firm, reported that 84 departures and 71 arrivals were cancelled at UK airports, representing 3% and 2% of total departures and arrivals, respectively. Some affected flights had to be redirected to European airports, although Cirium does not assign causes for cancellations, suggesting that not all were related to the air traffic outage
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