Gatwick confirmed there had been 22 cancellations as of 10pm on Thursday while dozens more flights were delayed or diverted owing to a shortage of air traffic controllers. National Air Traffic Services (Nats) has apologised, the BBC reports, while Gatwick stated Friday lunchtime (15 September) the airport was "operating as normal".
The latest disruption, though, comes barely a fortnight after a wholesale ATC outage over the bank holiday weekend, which grounded flights for several hours with wide-ranging knock-on effects for travellers well into the following week.
The issue was eventually traced to a single flight plan which included two identically named but separate waypoint markers outside UK airspace, described by Nats as an "extremely rare set of circumstances".
Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has called on Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign and for the CAA to interview "to protect passengers".
"It is unacceptable that Nats is still not adequately staffing UK ATC, despite three separate days of disruption in just two weeks due to staff shortages," said O’Leary, who took aim at Nats after the bank holiday weekend outage.
"Airlines are paying millions of pounds to Nats each and every year and should not have to see their passengers suffer avoidable delays due to UK ATC staff shortages," O’Leary continued. "We call on Martin Rolfe to immediately resign."
Disruption ‘cannot go on’
Tim Alderslade, chief executive of Airlines UK, the trade body representing UK based airlines, said the latest delays were unacceptable. "The travelling public deserve better. Nats consistently reassured airlines, airports and the government that it could deliver this summer. This was clearly not the case. This latest round of disruption cannot go on and there needs to be a deep review of how Nats works to ensure that it delivers robust and resilient services for the UK public."
EasyJet chief executive Johan Lundgren told the BBC persistent staff shortages at Nats had "plagued the industry and repeatedly let down customers all summer".
Following the initial reviews into the bank holiday weekend meltdown, Advantage Travel Partnership chief executive Julia Lo Bue-Said called for any government or CAA-led review of the UK’s air traffic control landscape to consider the impact on the wider travel supply chain and eco-system, including agents and tour operators.
