Air traffic control news: Travel chaos to ‘last for days’ as hundreds of flights cancelled

British Airways said it had to make “significant changes” to its schedule and advised passengers booked on short-haul flights yesterday not to go to airports without confirming their flight status.

Aviation analyst Alastair Rosenschein, a former BA pilot, said the air traffic system appeared to have suffered “some kind of patchy failure as opposed to a total shutdown.”

He told Sky News that “the disruption will be quite severe at some airports” and some UK-bound flights would likely have to land in other European countries in order to reduce the flow of inbound planes.

European air traffic authority Eurocontrol warned of “very high” delays, and airports both inside and outside the UK told passengers to expect waits and cancellations. Passengers scheduled to fly to Britain from European airports said they were being told to expect delays of several hours or more.

Dozens of flights were canceled at Heathrow, Europe’s busiest air hub, which urged passengers “to only travel to the airport if their flight is confirmed as still operating.”

“Teams across Heathrow are working as hard as they can to minimise the knock-on impacts and assist those whose journeys have been affected,” it said in a statement.

National Air Traffic Services (Nats) says the outage has hit its ability to process flight plans automatically, meaning the plans had to be input manually, a much slower process.

It did not disclose the cause of the problem.

The service said it had “applied traffic flow restrictions to maintain safety” but that UK airspace remained open.

After fixing the problem, Nats said it was “working closely with airlines and airports to manage the flights affected as efficiently as possible.“Our engineers will be carefully monitoring the system’s performance as we return to normal operations.”

Thousands of airline passengers faced delays on Monday after Britain’s air traffic control system was hit by a breakdown that slowed takeoffs and landings across the UK on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

More than three hours after it reported the “technical issue”, flight control operator National Air Traffic Services said it had “identified and remedied” the problem and flights could begin to return to normal.

But scores of flights were canceled, and Heathrow Airport said its schedules would be “significantly disrupted” for the rest of the day.

Lyudmila Hristova said she and her husband had planned to attend a niece’s wedding in Bulgaria, but their flight from Heathrow was canceled.

“Now we are looking for some information on how we can arrange another flight,” she said. “It is so difficult, they just got us out of the airport, it was very rude. There was no information, just some leaflets and that’s it.”

Passengers have been hit by delays and cancellations caused by air traffic control technical problems.

Under UK law, those affected have legal rights which oblige the airlines to provide support to customers flying from a UK airport, arriving in the country on an EU or UK airline, or arriving at an EU airport on a UK airline.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) website says that in the case of a “significant delay”, the airline must provide a reasonable amount of food and drink, commonly in the form of vouchers, refunds for the cost of calls, and accommodation for passengers stuck overnight and transport to a hotel or their home.

A significant delay is defined as more than two hours for a short-haul flight of under 1,500km, more than three hours for medium haul of up to 3,500km, and more than four hours for long-haul flights.

The CAA accepts airlines are sometimes unable to organise such support, so passengers should make their own “reasonable” arrangements and keep receipts to claim money back, but the authority adds that “luxury hotels and alcohol” are unlikely to be paid for.

Airlines are required to pay compensation if flights arrive more than three hours late, but only when it is their fault, meaning the air traffic control problems could fall under the definition of “exceptional circumstances”, meaning the carriers are exempt from paying out.

A retired barrister who is stuck in Sardinia claimed an easyJet pilot said he had not seen an incident like this in 20 years.

Gemma Saleh, 43, who teaches part-time at law school and lives in Newcastle, said she boarded an easyJet flight with her family at 11.30am Sardinia time (10.30am London time), which was heading for Gatwick, and she remained on the plane for close to two hours.

She said: “We were told as we started to taxi there was an issue with the air traffic computer but he didn’t know more and we’d wait on the tarmac until we got a slot.

“[The pilot] also said as we are ‘rescue’ we would be able to find a slot soon, maybe 30 mins.

“He’s not seen this in 20 years.”

Here are some photographs from Heathrow airport, which was hardest hit by Monday’s travel chaos:

Azad Azeez, who is diabetic, was due to fly back from Gibraltar on Monday after already rearranging a flight days earlier due to thunderstorms over France.

He told The Independent the next available flight would be on 3 September – almost a week later.

He said: “Our flight back home from Gibraltar was due to leave on Thursday 24/8 but was cancelled due to thunderstorms over France. The next available flight back wasn’t until today and now we’re sitting at the airport as our flights have been cancelled again due to the air traffic failure, we have little to no money left and it’s looking like we won’t be able to get a seat till Sunday 3/9.”

Talking about his health fears, he added: “We have no idea what we’re going to do for accommodation at this point as they want us to pay for it and claim back after.

“I’ve already missed 3 days of work and now will miss another week. I’m type 1 diabetic and have run out of my night time insulin. My sensor will die in 4 days with no way of getting another one. No one seems to be of any help.”

The UK air traffic control failure will be investigated “very thoroughly”, according to the National Air Traffic Services.

Juliet Kennedy, operations director at Nats, said in a tweeted statement: “Our teams worked hard to resolve the problem, and I’m pleased to say it was fixed earlier on this afternoon. However, it will take some time for flights to return to normal.

“And we will continue to work with the airlines and the airports to recover the situation. Our absolute priority is safety and we will be investigating very thoroughly what happened today.”

Another airline passenger told The Independent that she and her travel partner, would lose around £1,000 after having to miss work as a result of the system failure.

Dainora Daugvilaite, who was due to fly from Nice to Gatwick on Monday with easyJet, said they had also considered driving back to London after being unable to get Eurostar tickets.

She said: “We looked for all possible solutions, such as flying to other airports, but there are no other flights to any directions provided by easyJet until this Thursday.

“We thought of taking a bus to Paris and taking the train from Paris, but there are no train tickets provided by Eurostar left either. We even thought of driving back to London for 15 hours but who would lend us a car to cross the border?”

She added: “In the end we gave up and booked a flight with 1 change to London through Amsterdam. We hope that our hotel and meals will be reimbursed. However, as I’m self-employed I’m losing 3 days of work. My partner does not have any holiday allowance left either so together we are losing over £1,000.

“I understand that situations as such happens, but we could not believe that there were no flights for the next three days.”