BBC News 29 August 2023
By Emma Harrison & Francesca Gillett
Holidaymakers heading to and from the UK will face disruption for days after an air traffic fault caused chaos, the transport secretary has warned.
Mark Harper said it will take "some days to get... everybody to where they should be", after more than a quarter of UK flights were cancelled on Monday.
The glitch left thousands stranded.
An issue on this scale had not happened for a decade, according to Mr Harper.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Mr Harper was in "constant dialogue" with all the industry participants and will be talking to airlines later.
He said passengers had rights with regards to accommodation and alternative flights and Mr Harper would be making sure airlines "honour those obligations".
Heathrow Airport - the world's busiest two-runway airport - said on Tuesday that its schedule remained "significantly disrupted", while EasyJet said some flights are still "unable to operate".
Holidaymakers described a nightmare Bank Holiday Monday, with many waiting hours for news of when they might get moving.
National Air Traffic Services (Nats) confirmed the fault just after midday on Monday, before it announced at 15:15 BST that it had identified and remedied the issue.
But it said it would "take some time for flights to return to normal" - as it launched an investigation into what went wrong.
The government is confident there was no cyber attack, Transport Secretary Mr Harper told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Tuesday morning - but he admitted the timing "was not at all helpful for people".
"The last time there was something this significant was about a decade ago, so these things do not happen frequently" he said. "It is going to take some days to get completely everybody back to where they should be."
Aviation expert John Strickland explained the knock-on impact on flight disruption will continue to "ripple on over the next few days".
"Fortunately it is very uncommon," Mr Strickland told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "The scale of this one was so significant - instead of minutes it lasted into hours.
"Hours really do have an enormous domino effect."
According to aviation data firm Cirium, 790 departing flights were cancelled on Monday, which it said was equivalent to about 27% of all departures, and 785, or about 27%, of incoming flights.
Heathrow had the highest number of cancellations, Cirium said, followed by Gatwick and Manchester.
Airports and airlines were forced to apologise to travellers for the delays and cancellations, and in some cases have offered passengers full refunds.
London's Heathrow Airport asked passengers travelling on 29 August to contact their airlines before coming to the airport.
Gatwick said they expected delays and cancellations on Tuesday, while London Luton Airport also said flights across UK airspace remained subject to delays and cancellation and passengers should check with their airline for the status of their flight.
Aviation analyst Sally Gethin also said the disruption in the aftermath of the technical fault will last for days, saying there could be a "knock-on effect into later this week".
Passengers have recounted how they faced huge disruption as air traffic control had to input routes manually, rather than automatically, because of the fault.
Katrina Harrison and her family - including one-year-old twin grandchildren - spent the night at Leeds Bradford Airport after their flight to Antalya was cancelled on Monday afternoon.
Ms Harrison, from Stockton-on-Tees, told the PA news agency they were given a bottle of water, a KitKat and a packet of crisps and all the shops sold out of food and drink on Monday night.
"We weren't given a blanket, we've been absolutely freezing," she said. "There were no hotels to stay in, we couldn't get the car out of the car park. We haven't slept, we tried to sleep on the floor but couldn't."
Serena Hamilton at Belfast International Airport said she was likely to miss a heart transplant check-up after her flight to Newcastle-upon-Tyne was cancelled.
"I had a transplant 15 months ago and these appointments are very important," she told BBC News.
Cricket journalist Rory Dollard and his family are stuck in Bergerac, France and were told it could take up to six days to get home after his Ryanair flight was cancelled.
Thousands of passengers hit
In a statement late on Monday night, Tui reassured its customers that on top of a refund they would be entitled to a "future holiday voucher of £100 per person".
BA said there were "significant and unavoidable delays and cancellations" and apologised for the inconvenience caused. It has advised customers who were travelling on short-haul services to check their flight was still running before heading to the airport.
The airline added customers due to travel on a short-haul service on Tuesday may be able to move their flights free of charge to a later date.
The CAA says that an airline has a duty of care to provide food, drink and accommodation if delays stretch overnight.
If a flight is cancelled, passengers should be offered a choice of a refund or alternative travel arrangements at the earlier opportunity.
Nats said it was a "flight planning issue" which had affected the system's ability to automatically process flight plans.
This meant that flight plans could not be processed at the same volume, "hence the requirement for traffic flow restrictions" for safety.
Operations director Juliet Kennedy apologised for the disruption and announced an investigation into what happened.
