Travel Chaos and Frustration as Passengers Face Second Day of UK Flight Disruption

Heathrow airport insists recent travel chaos is beginning to ease after telling airlines to cut their flight programmes to tackle delays and cancellations (PA)

Thousands of travellers continue to face disruption to their flights the day after a “network-wide failure” hit the UK air traffic control system.

Heathrow airport has warned passengers on Tuesday of “continuing disruption on some routes, including flight cancellations.”

This comes after hundreds of flights got cancelled and delayed on Monday due to a technical issue that struck the UK air traffic control system, causing travel chaos on one of the busiest days of the year.

The National Air Traffic Services (NATS) has now fixed the technical issue and is working with airlines and airports to “manage the flights affected as efficiently as possible.”

Transport secretary Mark Harper said that while the air traffic control issue has been resolved, flights are “still unfortunately affected.”

UK resident Dimitra Raikou and her family saw their easyJet flight from Kos to London cancelled early Tuesday morning, after a number of delays. She has been stranded with her family in Greece, trying to find the next available direct flight, which the booking system said was Sept. 7.

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“We feel very frustrated. The airline was so overwhelmed with calls from other passengers, it was impossible to get any information.”

The knock-on impact from Monday’s outage means that holidaymakers and families planning to return to the UK before the start of the school year, will remain stranded abroad until the backlog in the system clears out.

Ms. Raikou had to change her destination from London to Bristol and will be flying on Sept. 3 to avoid missing more work days.

The outage on the August bank holiday affected around one million people, with 3,049 flights due to depart and another 3,054 scheduled to arrive.

Aviation analytics firm Cirium reported that on Tuesday five percent of all departures and five percent of all arrivals got cancelled, with numbers continuously changing as the day progresses.

Mr. Harper advised passengers to seek information on their rights in case their flight gets delayed or cancelled. The UK Civil Aviation Authority said that airlines have a duty to take care of affected passengers, including providing them with food and drink, providing accommodation if the flight gets delayed overnight, a refund, and alternative travel arrangements.

Ms. Raikou said that many passengers had to sleep in the airport because local hotels were fully booked.

Travellers won’t be entitled to any cash compensation because the technical issue falls under the category of “extraordinary circumstance” outside of the airlines’ control.

Mr. Harper recognised the “frustration” of passengers, whose flights were affected. He told the BBC on Tuesday that the outage was caused by a “technical issue,” not a “cyber security incident.”

An independent investigation will look into what caused the incident and what can be done to reduce the chances of it happening again.

“Our absolute priority is safety and we will be investigating very thoroughly what happened today,” NATS operations director Juliet Kennedy said in a video statement issued on Monday.

The last time the UK flying saw such a single day’s disruption was in 2010, after the eruption of the Icelandic volcano, which caused prolonged closure of European airspace and cancellation of 100,000 flights.

NATS has apologized for the impact on people’s travel plans and said its engineers will be carefully monitoring the system’s performance as the UK returns to normal operations.

The failure of the air traffic control system meant that the UK was not able to automatically process flight plans, which had to be processed manually instead. This slowed down the operations and restricted the traffic flow to ensure safety.

Gatwick Airport announced it would operate a normal schedule on Tuesday but advised passengers to check the status of their flight before travelling to the airport.