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UK flight chaos could last for days, airline passengers warned

Technical meltdown in air traffic control causes bank holiday misery, with 500 flights cancelled and others delayed

• UK air traffic control issues – latest updates

Airline passengers have been warned that flight disruption could persist for days, after a technical meltdown in UK air traffic control left hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded or delayed on the summer bank holiday.

Returning holidaymakers and those hoping to travel out of UK airports faced cancellations and delays of up to 12 hours after takeoffs and inbound flights were suspended due to a “network-wide” computer failure.

A limited number of flights were able to operate but air traffic was severely restricted as engineers struggled to locate and rectify the problem.

With controllers forced to input flight plans manually, about 500 flights were cancelled and others delayed for hours even before Nats, the national airspace controllers, announced at 3.15pm that it had “identified and remedied” the issue that arose almost four hours earlier.

Passengers at airports in the UK and around Europe reported being left in limbo with travel plans wrecked and check-in desks closed, while airlines were unable to confirm if their flights would leave.

The unusually long outage is likely to cause disruption for several days, with knock-on delays from crew and planes left out of position.

British Airways said passengers due to travel on Monday or Tuesday could move their flights free of charge, while Heathrow on Monday evening urged passengers to come to the airport only if flights were confirmed as operating.

At Gatwick, where about 150 flights were scrapped, easyJet cancelled virtually all departing international flights on Monday afternoon. The airline could not yet confirm what flights would operate on Tuesday but it is understood to expect some continuing impact on its schedules.

Gatwick said in a statement they would “operate a normal schedule” on Tuesday, but said passengers were “advised to check the status of their flight with the airline before travelling to the airport”.

According to flight tracking sites, planes were delayed from about 11.30am. Nats confirmed the problem at about 12.10pm, saying it was “currently experiencing a technical issue” and had “applied traffic flow restrictions to maintain safety”.

After announcing it had fixed the original issue, Nats said: “We are now working closely with airlines and airports to manage the flights affected as efficiently as possible. Our engineers will be carefully monitoring the system’s performance as we return to normal operations.

“Our priority is always to ensure that every flight in the UK remains safe and we are sincerely sorry for the disruption this is causing. Please contact your airline for information on how this may affect your flight.”

According to data from the analytics firm Cirium, 232 outbound flights from the UK and 271 inbound flights had been cancelled by 2.30pm, just under 10% of all services.

A Heathrow spokesperson said schedules would “remain significantly disrupted for the rest of the day”. They added: “We ask passengers to only travel to the airport if their flight is confirmed as still operating. Teams across Heathrow are working as hard as they can to minimise the knock-on impacts and assist those whose journeys have been affected.”

A British Airways spokesperson said: “Like all airlines using UK airspace, our flights have been severely disrupted … While Nats has now resolved the issue, it has created significant and unavoidable delays and cancellations. We’re working as hard as possible to get customers whose flights have been affected on their way again and have apologised for the huge inconvenience caused.”

The travel operator Tui warned its customers to expect “significant delays to some of our flights”.

Flights from Ireland were also affected, with many due to cross UK airspace.

As well as holidaymakers, passengers affected by delays included British athletes and others returning from the World Athletics Championships in Hungary.

The BBC presenter Gabby Logan said on X that her plane was stuck on the runway at Budapest airport, adding: “After almost three weeks away from home I am hours from hugging my family. And have just been told UK airspace is shut. We could be here for 12 hours. So we sit on the plane and wait.”

Engineers at Nats will have been racing against the clock to limit the fallout from the outage, potentially the most serious since its control centre in Swanwick, Hampshire, opened in 2002, falling on one of the key travel dates in the calendar.

A computer glitch at Nats in 2014 affected flights until the following day, despite airspace being curtailed only for about an hour.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats questioned the government’s apparent slow response before the transport secretary, Mark Harper, posted on X on Monday afternoon that ministers were “doing all we can”.

Harper said: “UK airspace remains open but traffic flow restrictions are in place. Nats are working at pace to fix this and aviation minister [Charlotte Vere] and I are doing all we can to support them.”

Earlier, the shadow transport secretary, Louise Haigh, posted that the issue was “extremely concerning for passengers travelling in and out of the UK on one of the busiest days of the year”, adding that she was “surprised” by the lack of a ministerial statement.

The Lib Dems called on Rishi Sunak to convene a Cobra meeting. The party’s transport spokesperson, Wera Hobhouse, said: “Millions of holidaymakers could be facing huge disruption in the coming days due to this fault and we can’t risk this government being missing in action yet again.”

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London Air Travel’s Monday Briefing – 8 August 2022

Welcome to London Air Travel’s weekly briefing on air travel around the world, as published every Monday at 06:00 BST.

London Air Travel » Monday Briefing » London Air Travel’s Monday Briefing – 8 August 2022

Welcome to London Air Travel’s Monday Briefing for the week beginning 8 August 2022.

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Aviation Faces The Prospect Of A Recession

When airlines announced their second quarter results, they were been keen to trumpet strong demand and, for the most part, a return to profitability.

They had much less to say about the prospects for 2023. The Bank of England did, however.

When it announced a rise in interest rates by 0.5 percentage points to 1.75% last week the Bank of England forecast the UK would enter recession this year.

This is expected to last for five quarters and will be as deep as the recession of the 1990s. Inflation in the UK is expected to peak at 13% will stay at close to 10% for most of next year.

If a recession does happen, airlines will face very different circumstances compared to the past.

Airlines don’t have the capacity to meet current demand, but they would enter a recession with balance sheets severely weakened by COVID-19. Scope to raise new capital will be limited.

History has shown that a decline in business travel, still yet to return to pre-COVID levels, is one of the first indicators of a downturn. Corporate travel budgets are an easy target for cuts. Many employees would rather not be out of sight at a time of possible redundancies.

The levers airlines have deployed in the past may not assist this time. Readers may recall after the 2008 financial crises many special premium leisure deals. The rationale being that Britons will give up many things, but not a holiday. This may be different when all households face rising energy costs and increased mortgage rates.

The “never let a good crisis go to waste” option of structural labour cost savings will also not be available at a time of labour shortages.

After the 2008 financial crisis many airline CEOs were convinced they had made the structural reforms to withstand any crisis and state intervention was a thing of the past. COVID-19 proved otherwise, and airlines are not out of the woods yet.

BA Long Haul Route Network Updates

Here are a couple of speculative BA long haul route network updates:

Following slot allocation reports for winter season, there was speculation BA may add new destinations at Gatwick as “tag on” flights from Antigua.

Last week BA retimed inbound flights from Antigua on days without tag-ons to arrive at Gatwick more than four hours earlier. This suggests no new routes will launch.

BA flights to mainland China are only on sale on a full fare basis from the summer 2023 season.

Last week BA changed its timetables for flights to Beijing and Shanghai to resume from 11 & 10 January 2023. Both are scheduled to operate three times weekly with timings changed for extended journey times. Whether these actually operate is another matter entirely.

Also of interest this week:

Boeing could resume deliveries of 787 Dreamliner aircraft as soon as this week, subject to formal approval by the Federal Aviation Administration. (Bloomberg)

A profile of BALPA leader Martin Chalk:

“On my last job, we took 350 tonnes of aeroplane and 180 tonnes of kerosene 12km into the air, where it was minus 70C, often 300mph winds – we flew for 14 hours and landed on the other side of the world with 550 [sic] people. The safety aspect doesn’t come by chance.” (The Observer)

“I took eight flights in four days and it was fine”.

Stephen Bleach flies Heathrow – Palma – Manchester – Alicante – Gatwick – Faro – Bristol – Malaga – Stansted:

“Amid justified anger at disruption and cock-ups, nobody seems to have noticed that the vast majority of flights are operating normally. As a result, we’ve missed a wider story: for millions of Britons, after three long years, proper summer holidays are finally back — and they’re ‘brilliant'”. (The Sunday Times)

All is not well in the lounges, however.

Tyler Brule bemoans their clientele and yearns for the era of the more exclusive Concorde set of Joan Collins, John McEnroe and Henry Kissinger:

“passengers are confusing the BA lounge with a branch of M&S, an adult daycare centre and their living rooms. Buffets are raided and carry-ons filled with cans and bottles, grown men and women are wandering around in what they think is chic athleisure but is really just synthetic jammies, trainers are propped up on tables and every other passenger seems to be suffering from an overheating crotch as legs are splayed wide open.” (The Sunday Times)

What’s it like to stay at an all-inclusive resort?

“One night I asked Tolga, one of the resort reps, why people go to all-inclusive resorts. Without skipping a beat he replied, ‘They want to get drunk’, making the international hand gesture for drinking, then adding in a lower voice, ‘Some people, they start before breakfast.'” Just like at the airport then. (Financial Times)

Late post publication updates:

[Reserved for updates throughout the day]

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London’s Heathrow Extends Limit on Passengers Through October

The passenger cap is likely to result in even more canceled flights at britain’s busiest hub..

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The new restriction is likely to result in more canceled flights.

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London’s Heathrow Airport said Monday it will extend its cap on daily passenger numbers until the end of October as part of its efforts to cope with soaring demand for air travel amid staffing shortages.

The airport, one of Europe’s busiest, said a maximum of 100,000 travelers can depart each day until October 29. The daily cap was initially expected to be lifted on September 11. The restriction is likely to result in more canceled flights even after airlines already slashed thousands of flights from their summer schedules.

Heathrow imposed the temporary limit in July and told airlines to stop selling tickets during the peak summer travel season, saying the expected passenger traffic was more than airport ground staff could handle.

The airport said its temporary cap had resulted in “fewer last-minute cancellations” and “shorter waits for bags.”

It added the capacity limits would be kept under review and “could be lifted earlier should there be a sustained picture of better resilience and a material increase in resourcing levels.”

Scores of summer flights into and departing from Heathrow have already been canceled in recent months, and passengers have reported long waits at security, lost luggage and lengthy flight delays.

Booming demand for summer travel after two years of COVID-19 travel restrictions have overwhelmed European airlines and airports , which had laid off tens of thousands of pilots, cabin crew, check-in staff, ground crew and baggage handlers as the industry ground to a halt during the pandemic.