Airlines criticise air traffic control as second glitch causes more disruption

Airlines have criticised the UK's air traffic control over a second glitch this month that has caused flight delays and cancellations.

EasyJet said the incident "once again calls into question the resilience" of the system, while Wizz Air said there was a "national confidence crisis" in Nats, which runs the UK's air traffic.

The technical problem in Prestwick caused disruption at airports across Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England on Monday morning, delaying dozens of flights.

Nats said a "connectivity issue" was to blame for the disruption, and that it had "nothing to do" with a separate software defect at Swanwick that led to the cancellation of 2,000 flights earlier this month.

The underlying issue causing Monday's disruption has since been resolved, though officials warned of knock-on effects.

Industry representative body Airlines UK said both passengers and airlines "deserve better" after "yet another Nats failure".

Jet2 boss Steve Heapy called for "urgent and accountable" action to bolster the UK's air traffic control infrastructure.

Ryanair reiterated its calls for Nats chief Martin Rolfe to resign. The latest outage affected 140 of the airline's flights and 25,000 passengers.

British Airways said "yet another techincal fault with Nats" was "disappointing".

A Nats spokesperson apologised for the disruption, saying: "In the real world, we accept technology can and sometimes does fail. Our job is minimising disruption where possible.

"What isn't acceptable is any incident where safety is compromised - this is always our first priority."

They added that it was working to return air traffic to normal as quickly as possible and urged passengers to check their flight status with their airline.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander acknowledged the problems with flights were "deeply frustrating" for passengers.

Steve Davies, 74, told the BBC that he was "cheesed off with air traffic control" as technical issues with its systems seemed to be "happening a lot".

He and his wife Sadie were stuck at Birmingham airport after being told to disembark their easyJet flight to Edinburgh on Monday morning.

Nicole McCloskey, from Kilmarnock, was due to go to Disneyland Paris with her family before their flight was cancelled.

She told the BBC her family got a message to say the flight was delayed while they were travelling to Glasgow airport, but only found out it had been grounded altogether once they arrived.

Nicole said they have been rebooked on another flight this afternoon and were hopeful "it's sorted in time".

The previous incident involving the Nats centre in Swanwick affected hundreds of thousands of passengers, with some sleeping on airport floors or getting stuck overseas earlier this month.

The disruption was much more severe as it affected intercontinental and long-haul travel via UK airspace.

Nats said in a report last week that the software glitch happened "in the space of a millisecond" leading to the system producing corrupted data.

Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe told the BBC he would not resign, saying the software defect was "very, very obscure".

"My job is to make sure that we have this happen as infrequently as possible," he said.