The boss of low-cost airline Ryanair has labelled the UK’s air traffic control body as “hopeless” and called for its chief to be sacked after a damning report revealed a litany of failures at the organisation.
Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary branded NATS “hopeless” and reiterated calls for its “overpaid and underperforming” chief executive to be sacked.
This comes after a report from the regulator on the disastrous NATS air traffic control meltdown last year, that ruined hundreds-of-thousands of holidays.
The Civil Aviation Authority said it estimated that over 700,000 passengers were impacted by the disaster, triggered a technical glitch, including 300,000 people by cancellations, 95,000 by delays of over three hours, and a further 300,000 by shorter delays.
The CAA appointed an independent panel which published a report, and issued a series of recommendations, including possible legislation to prevent it reoccurring.
Prepared by an Independent Review Panel, the report gives more than 30 recommendations for NATS (National Air Traffic Services) to prevent it from happening again.
These include considering changing the law to protect consumers and propping up contingency plans.
Take ‘urgent action’ now
Ryanair said this morning, that the CAA report confirms a series of failings, as O’Leary pleaded with transport secretary Louise Haigh to take “urgent action”.
The low-cost airline said the report proved there were “inadequate contingency measures”, despite NATS claiming the contrary. In its report, the CAA confirmed there were seven manually operated terminals available on the 28 August, when the meltdown happened, but Nats staff were “not trained to enter flight plans.
It also said the publication showed NATS was not staffed properly and took more than an hour-and-a-half to get on site, and the body also failed to take action in time. Ryanair said it “took four hours to escalate the system failure”.
Lastly, the low-cost carrier accused NATS of failing to notify stakeholders, saying despite systems failing after half-eight in the morning, it did not tell Eurocontrol until 10:43, meaning airlines and passengers were left in the lurch.
It welcomed the findings which showed NATS’ system collapse “caused considerable distress to over 700,000 aviation passengers and resulted in substantial costs to airlines and airports”.
However, Ryanair questioned NATS’ claim that it has “acted to address a number of findings arising from its own internal investigation after the incident”.
Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary said: “UK Transport Minister, Louise Haigh, must now take immediate action to fix NATS hopeless service, and reform UK ATC (air traffic control) so that airlines and passengers can avoid further delays/disruptions at the hands of NATS.”
She should start by sacking NATS overpaid (£1.5m p.a.) and underperforming CEO, Martin Rolfe, and get someone competent to reform and run the UK’s ATC services
Meanwhile, Johan Lundgren, the chief executive of easyJet, said “the report makes clear once again that airlines and passengers were severely let down by NATS due to its failure of resilience and lack of planning.”
Airlines were then left picking up the pieces and costs which ran into millions.”
“Lessons must now be learnt and the recommendations urgently actioned by NATS as an ATC failure of this scale, a crucial part of national infrastructure, can never be allowed to happen again.”
Following the report’s publication this morning, Transport Secretary Louise Haigh said: “The NATS IT failure last year was an unprecedented event that we all hope never happens again, so I welcome the final report and its recommendations to strengthen the sector and restore passenger confidence.
“I’ve said before that I will be the passenger-in-chief and my priority is to ensure all passengers feel confident when they fly – that’s why my Department will look to introduce reforms, when we can, to provide air travellers with the highest level of protection possible.”