A Nigerian passenger has recounted being stranded at Heathrow as a NATS failure disrupted British Airways and cancelled over 2,000 UK flights.
A Nigerian passenger has recounted the frustration of being stranded along with other passengers at London Heathrow Airport after a major failure in the United Kingdom’s air traffic control system disrupted British Airways and led to the cancellation of more than 2,000 flights over several days.
The disruption began on Tuesday, September 8, following a technical fault in the flight data processing system operated by National Air Traffic Services (NATS), causing widespread problems at Heathrow and other major UK airports.
Latest figures show the scale of the disruption was considerably greater than initially reported.
According to aviation analytics company Cirium, more than 1,750 flights at UK airports were cancelled on Tuesday alone. A further 327 flights, representing about 5.6 per cent of the 5,869 scheduled services, did not operate on Wednesday, September 9. By Thursday, schedules were returning towards normal.
British Airways was particularly badly affected by the disruption, cancelling about 550 flights across September 8 and 9 and affecting more than 85,000 passengers.
The airline cancelled about 200 flights on Wednesday alone as it struggled with the knock-on effects of aircraft and crews being left out of position following the previous day’s outage.
British Airways said it was able to operate almost 80 per cent of its schedule on Wednesday and had rebooked flights for the vast majority of affected customers, while working on arrangements for the remaining passengers.
The airline acknowledged that “tens of thousands” of its customers had been affected by the disruption over the two days.
The disruption was felt particularly strongly at Heathrow, British Airways’ main hub, where passengers faced cancellations and lengthy delays.
A Nigerian passenger caught up in the disruption documented the situation at Heathrow, recounting the difficulties faced by travellers as they waited for information and for their journeys to resume.
“We haven’t been provided refreshments for over two hours that we have been stranded,” the passenger said.
The problems extended far beyond Heathrow. Gatwick, Manchester, Stansted, Edinburgh, Luton, London City, Bristol and other airports were affected as restrictions rippled through the UK aviation network.
NATS said the fault affected its flight data processing system. The problem was eventually resolved on Tuesday evening, but the organisation warned that recovery would take time because of the backlog created across the aviation network.
NATS Chief Executive Martin Rolfe said an investigation was required to establish exactly what caused the failure. Authorities ruled out a cyberattack, while the UK Civil Aviation Authority has been asked by the government to conduct an independent review of the incident.
The UK Civil Aviation Authority also reminded airlines of their obligations to passengers affected by cancellations and delays. It said the NATS outage was likely to constitute “extraordinary circumstances”, meaning affected passengers were unlikely to qualify for statutory compensation directly resulting from the incident, although airlines remained responsible for providing care and assistance.
The scale of the disruption has also renewed scrutiny of the resilience of Britain’s air traffic control infrastructure.
By Thursday, September 10, flight schedules were returning to normal, with only a small number of delays remaining, although investigations into the technical failure were continuing.
