More than 2,000 flights have been cancelled after an air traffic control system failure that has thrown airports across the UK into chaos. Nats, the air traffic control provider, fixed the problem within hours on Tuesday, but hundreds of thousands of passengers were hit by further delays and cancellations on Wednesday. Martin Rolfe, the chief executive of Nats, has been given a week to report back on the reasons for the technical failure.
People affected by the disruption talked about their frustration during the two days of chaos – from hours spent stuck on planes waiting to take off, to spending the night sleeping on the floor of Heathrow airport. Here are some of their experiences: Daniel Garrick, 32, a software engineer, was scheduled to leave Heathrow on a flight to Austin, Texas, on Tuesday. After waiting for seven hours on the asphalt, “we were released from the plane only to find Heathrow in absolute chaos”, he says.
People were sleeping on every spare inch of flooring, in arrivals and at security.” Baggage reclaim was “pandemonium”, he says. You couldn’t tell where your baggage was supposed to be. Someone had an air tag in their luggage and we figured out that the bags were still on the plane.
Eventually, there was some announcement where we were told they were not going to finish getting all the bags off the planes tonight, so we’re just going to have to leave.” At the time of writing, Garrick still had not retrieved his case with a week’s worth of clothes. Garrick’s airline, British Airways, sent a mass email apology at about 9pm on Tuesday. Luckily I’m staying with a friend of a friend in Surrey.
It was over £100 just for the Uber here.” Melanie Thompson, 71, an interdisciplinary artist, was on a 14-hour flight returning from her performance at a mixed media festival with her son in Tokyo on Tuesday when she was told the flight would not land in London. About 40 minutes before we arrived, the pilot very politely said, ‘because of IT problems and disruptions at Heathrow, we are going to have to divert to Edinburgh’. About 20 minutes later, he said: ‘We were hoping we could refuel and then take you on to Heathrow.
But we can’t do that, so we would like you to stay in Edinburgh tonight.’ Then we were left to our own devices to find travel and accommodation for the night. Thomas Reilly, 55, was due to fly with BA from Marrakech to Gatwick on Tuesdayand then on to Marseille, where he lives and works as a freelance geopolitical adviser. It was only when he got to the airport that he was told his flight was cancelled.
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