UK air-traffic 'fiasco' could cost airlines £100m, says Willie Walsh
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The air traffic control glitch which caused cancellations and delays for thousands of travellers into and out of the UK on Monday could end up costing airlines in the region of £100m, the Director-General of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) Willie Walsh has said.
Speaking this morning, Mr Walsh said that it was "staggering" that the UK's air-traffic control system was caused to "collapse" as a result of incorrect flight data.
The delays left thousands of UK holidaymakers stranded overseas.
The technical issue in the UK led to travel chaos for passengers in Irish airports with hundreds of flights being cancelled. A host of flights in and out of Irish airports were affected by knock-on delays on Tuesday.
This morning however, disruption was said to be minimal.
"Mr Walsh called the disruptions a "fiasco" that "should never have happened."
“This system should be designed to reject data that’s incorrect, not to collapse the system.
“If that is true, it demonstrates a considerable weakness that must have been there for some time and I’m amazed if that is the cause of this," Mr Walsh told .
Speaking about the delays and cancellations on RTÉ Radio's , Mr Walsh said the incident could cost airlines around £100m.
"What really frustrates airlines is that they are not in a position to recoup any of this money from Nats.
"Nats gets a free run here, they don't incur any costs as a result of this, and airlines are left to pick up the pieces and significant cost associated with the NATS failure," he said.
Earlier, UK's National Air Traffic Services (Nats) chief executive confirmed that the flight disruption was caused by an issue with inbound flight data.
Martin Rolfe said the issue had been fixed and that his organisation was working "incredibly closely" with airlines to help them recover "as efficiently as they possibly can."
Mr Rolfe said Nats’ systems ensured that “no incorrect safety-related information could be presented to an air traffic controller or impact the rest of the air traffic system”, and there are “no indications that this was a cyber attack”.
“Very occasionally technical issues occur that are complex and take longer to resolve," he said.