London (AFP) – UK air travellers faced more misery Wednesday with 177 flights scrapped across the country, as Britain’s air traffic control service scrambled to recover from a technical glitch which it ruled out as a cyberattack. Aircraft tracking website FlightRadar24 revealed the fresh cancellations after 1,300 flights to and from UK airports were axed Tuesday, with tens of thousands of customers affected at British Airways alone. Nearly all the latest flights were at London Heathrow, Britain’s busiest airport, FlightRadar24 wrote on X.
The head of the National Air Traffic Services (NATS), Martin Rolfe, meanwhile said “we have at this point ruled out cyber” as a cause. “We don’t believe it was a cyberattack,” he told BBC Radio. Rolfe said NATS will be doing a “very, very thorough” investigation into what exactly caused the incident. NATS warned in an X post late Tuesday that “it will take time to recover” from the outage. UK news outlets reported that British Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander had summoned Rolfe to a meeting with her on Wednesday. Rolfe earlier told Sky News that he accepted “full responsibility” but declined to say if he was considering quitting his job. Alexander said on X that she was “seeking assurances that lessons will be learned and systems that support aviation are up to the job.”
Neal McMahon, chief operations officer at Irish no-frills airline Ryanair, called for Rolfe to be fired, accusing him of having “failed UK travellers.”
Heathrow said late Tuesday that departures had resumed, after the “technical issue” forced the airport to suspend arrivals. But it warned that “disruption is expected to continue,” asking passengers in an X post to check with their airline before travelling to the airport. The air traffic chaos follows a technical glitch in July last year that saw scores of flights to and from the UK cancelled, prompting anger from airline chiefs. Britain meanwhile suffered its worst air systems failure in years in 2023, with more than 700,000 passengers affected after hundreds of flights were delayed or cancelled. Responding to the latest fallout, NATS said: “We know this is hugely frustrating and apologise unreservedly.”
Caught up by the glitch, healthcare worker Josie Donoghue said it had been “an absolute nightmare” at London’s Gatwick airport, having had to disembark her flight to Ireland after three hours stuck on the runway. “Getting through that airport was like trying to get out of Alcatraz,” she told Britain’s domestic Press Association news agency. Liverpool, Birmingham and Edinburgh airports were also affected, while Dublin airport said it had cancelled dozens of flights. Ryanair said more than 65,000 of its passengers had been disrupted and it had cancelled more than 50 flights. English football club Arsenal, due to play Napoli in the Champions League Wednesday in the southern Italian city, was forced to cancel a news conference after the team’s flight was delayed.
© 2024 AFP
