The latest NATS failure continues to impact UK aviation just as airlines are looking for a strong finish to the Summer season, and is likely to cost millions in flight delay compensation as they are held liable for passenger-related costs.
A harsh situation when the airlines have no recourse to NATS for the supplier's failure of service - but something they have had to deal with from previous NATS failures in recent years. Who would want to be an airline CEO or indeed CFO?
Flight cancellations in the UK on 8th September between 12pm and 12am:
- 728 outbound flights (representative of 43% of total flights)
- 549 inbound flights (representative of 29% of total flights)
How many passengers were disrupted?
While every UK airport was impacted to some degree, attention naturally gravitates to the largest ten, who collectively were scheduled to handle nearly 1,400 departures between 12:00 and the end of operations. Those 1,400 departures should have resulted in 274,300 seats being operated, and assuming a cautious average load factor of 80%, some 219,000 passengers would have been disrupted by yesterday’s events.
Passengers affected at airline level:
- easyJet and Ryanair were scheduled to operate in excess of 55,000 seats on 623 departing flights from 12:00 yesterday, and with low-cost airlines typically having higher load factors than legacy airlines, applying a 90% average load factor would suggest that the two airlines collectively saw over 100,000 passengers disrupted.
- British Airways, the largest legacy carrier impacted, had planned to operate 294 departing flights across their Heathrow and Gatwick bases, in excess of 54,000 seats, applying an 85% load factor would suggest 46,500 of BA’s passengers disrupted.
Flight delays and cancellations will continue for the next few days as airlines recover operations, and the costs to the airlines and passengers will continue to increase. Sadly, this is not the first time that NATS have failed the industry; it’s a yearly occurrence, and promises are always made to fix the issues. If that is the case, then perhaps the tin of plasters being used to fix those problems is empty. On previous occasions, much was made of the lack of a backup system; it seems that if there are any backups in place, those failed as well.
How were airports affected?
