The aftermath of the closure of the UK airspace has continued to be felt as passengers remain delayed overseas, and flights are cancelled. As the effects of the ATC outage continue to be felt across the industry, aviation analytics firm, Cirium, has revealed the true scale of cancellations as of 9am today.
On August 28, 799 flights were cancelled departing UK airports– equivalent to around 27% of all departures, with 786 flights arriving into UK airports being cancelled. Heathrow saw the highest number of cancellations, followed by Gatwick and Manchester.
The next day, 182 flights were cancelled departing UK airports – equivalent to around 6% of all departures, with 163 flights arriving into UK airports cancelled yesterday.
Today (August 30), as of 9am, some 30 flights have been cancelled departing UK airports so far with 34 flights arriving into UK airports cancelled so far today.
The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has advised passengers to rebook their own travel if alternative flights aren't available and to claim the costs back from the airlines. Rob Bishton, Joint-Interim Chief Executive of the CAA, said: “The scale of the disruption has meant passengers have faced longer delays and in some cases are waiting several days for alternative flights, but airlines are working around the clock, putting on extra capacity to resolve the issue,” he says. “If you are still waiting to come home, airlines have a responsibility to look after you while you wait. This means providing you with meals, refreshments and hotel accommodation. If airlines cannot do this, you can organise your own meals and accommodation then claim costs back.”
Yesterday, Martin Rolfe, chief executive of NATS, the UK air travel control authority, apologised for the disruption and that all systems were back and running by yesterday afternoon. "Very occasionally technical issues occur that are complex and take longer to resolve. In the event of such an issue our systems are designed to isolate the problem and prioritise continued safe air traffic control. This is what happened yesterday. At no point was UK airspace closed but the number of flights was significantly reduced. Initial investigations into the problem show it relates to some of the flight data we received. Our systems, both primary and the back-ups, 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. There are no indications that this was a cyber-attack.”
NATS is working with the CAA to investigate the incident and will provide a preliminary report to the Secretary of State for Transport on Monday. “The conclusions of this report will be made public,” said Rolfe. “I would like again to apologise to everyone who has been affected.”