Ryanair has been forced to cancel 250 flights following a major system failure impacting UK air traffic control
Passengers wait inside and around London Heathrow Airport (Image: Anadolu via Getty Images)
Ryanair has confirmed 250 of its flights have been cancelled due to a significant system failure affecting air traffic control on Tuesday (September 8).
The airline’s chief operations officer said the financial impact will “run into the millions”, with warnings that the cancellations and delays could run for several more hours on Wednesday, according to the Express.
Speaking to Times Radio Breakfast, Neal McMahon said: “Airlines across the UK cancelled over a thousand flights, and hundreds of thousands of people were disrupted because the lessons learned for the previous failures have not been delivered by Martin Rolfe.”
When asked about the anticipated cost to Ryanair as a result of the incident, Mr McMahon said: “It’ll run into the millions.”
He went on to add: “We have crews everywhere and it’s a real shambles because we couldn’t get our aircraft where they were meant to be yesterday. We had 250 flights cancelled, so really, really disruptive for us.”
The budget carrier has also urged the Government to call on Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe to step down from his position.
When questioned on whether it was time for the Government to “step in”, operations officer Neal McMahon said: “Absolutely. We understand the Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander, is going to meet with Martin Rolfe today and we think she should ask him to resign.
“We think it’s critical that we put in somebody in Nats at the top who can deliver resilience, who can deliver the extra staffing that’s needed so that Nats can perform as well as other ATC (air traffic control) providers across Europe.
“Like, we don’t see this in France, we don’t see this in Italy, we don’t see this in Spain, we don’t see this in Ireland, we don’t see this in Germany. This is a UK problem where the backup systems don’t kick in when the primary systems have a fault.”
Meanwhile, Wizz Air UK’s managing director has said there are “serious questions about the resilience” of the country’s air traffic control service.
Yvonne Moynihan said: “This is now the third time that we have had an air traffic control failure, and during the peak period as well. So major questions need to be asked. There are serious questions about the resilience of this system.”
When asked whether Nats’ chief executive Martin Rolfe ought to consider stepping down, Ms Moynihan said: “I think in any industry, when you’ve had three failures, you need to consider that three strikes and you’re out.
“So I think it’s certainly something that he needs to look at. A third time and a third excuse is not enough anymore.”
Over 250 flights to and from UK airports have been cancelled this morning, according to FlightRadar, with passengers continuing to experience widespread disruption.
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