Tens of thousands of holidaymakers were struck by air travel carnage yesterday, just four months after the Heathrow power outage. A radar system failure shut down the UK’s air traffic control network on one of the most high-traffic days of the year. Some 577,000 passengers on 3,080 flights were impacted.
Operations were slowly returning to normal last night. Nevertheless, a total of 45 departures were cancelled, 35 arriving flights diverted and hundreds of others delayed. Heathrow 0 the UK’s busiest airport – was the worst affected. Angry airline chiefs have called for the boss of air traffic control to go after they had to tear up their timetables. A 2023 failure cost carriers a mssive £100million.
In March, a fire at an electricity substation forced Heathrow to close, costing tens of millions of pounds as 270,000 air passenger journeys were axed or delayed.
Yesterday’s latest meltdown hit the National Air Traffic Services (Nats) hub at Swanwick, in Hampshire.
Air traffic controllers with the job of safely handling around 2.2million flights and 250million passengers in UK airspace each year had no option but to stop operations because they were no longer sure of the gaps between planes.
The Sun revealed cockpit crews were urgently messaged: “Please be aware that there is an ATC radar failure at Swanwick which has zero rated UK airspace as of 14.30 GMT. We would appreciate your patience whilst we work through this unforeseen disruption.”
An easyJet captain whose plane was bound for Budapest was stuck on the tarmac at Gatwick for an hour joked: “They’ve turned it off and turned it back on again.”
A spokesman at Heathrow said: “Flights at Heathrow have resumed following a technical issue at the Nats Swanwick air traffic control centre.
“We are advising passengers to check with their airline before travelling. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”
At 5.30pm yesterday, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said: “I have been informed systems have now been restored but continued disruption is expected, and passengers should check with individual airports for advice.”