Gatwick Airport has apologised to passengers disrupted by air traffic control short notice staff shortages at the weekend.
Fifty-three flights out of Gatwick and 52 arrivals were cancelled on Sunday, representing 13% and 12% respectively of all scheduled outgoing and incoming flights, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
Many of the cancellations were easyJet flights. The airline told the Independent it was ‘extremely disappointed that customers are once again being impacted by this’.
Several other flights were delayed. Gatwick Airport said there were 11 cancellations this morning (9 September) – six of which were cancelled in advance yesterday – and things are ‘running smoothly so far’. It added ‘issues are not expected to continue’.
A spokesperson said: “NATS operate the London Gatwick air traffic control tower and they have successfully increased the number of air traffic controllers over recent months.
“So far this year (2024) London Gatwick has safely handled more than 170,000 flights through NATS, a 4% increase on last year. The NATS service has been fully available more than 99.6% of the time, operating 24 hours a day. London Gatwick typically has 800 or more flight ‘movements’ a day from a single runway.
“We will continue to work closely with the NATS leadership team to provide passengers and airlines with a good service. London Gatwick would like to apologise to any passengers who experienced disruption yesterday.”
Staff shortages at NATS has been an ongoing problem since COVID. After last year’s ATC outage over the August bank holiday weekend, NATS said it would ‘take some time’ to increase staffing levels in the control tower, saying it expected ‘further resilience’ to be in place by summer 2024. In July this year, Ryanair apologised for ‘excessive’ flight delays, which it blamed on ATC staff shortages.
Separately, the Independent reports British Airways cancelled 240 flights, affecting around 40,000 passengers between Friday and Sunday.
BA said: “We operate hundreds of flights every day without disruption, successfully getting tens of thousands of our customers to where they need to be.
“Along with other airlines, we’ve had to make some small adjustments to our schedule because of air traffic control restrictions caused by adverse weather.
“Whilst the vast majority of our customers will be unaffected, we apologise for any inconvenience caused and our teams are working hard to help get journeys back on track.”
Between 2-8 September, 427 flights were cancelled departing UK airports, equating to 2% of all scheduled departures, which is up 223% on the previous week, according to Cirium.
A further 408 arrivals into UK airports were cancelled during the same seven-day period, equating to 2% of all scheduled arrivals
Travel Gossip has asked easyJet for a comment.
The post Gatwick apologises after ATC staff shortages cause flight cancellations appeared first on Travel Gossip.
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Fifty-three flights out of Gatwick and 52 arrivals were cancelled on Sunday, representing 13% and 12% respectively of all scheduled outgoing and incoming flights, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
Many of the cancellations were easyJet flights. The airline told the Independent it was ‘extremely disappointed that customers are once again being impacted by this’.
Several other flights were delayed. Gatwick Airport said there were 11 cancellations this morning (9 September) – six of which were cancelled in advance yesterday – and things are ‘running smoothly so far’. It added ‘issues are not expected to continue’.
A spokesperson said: “NATS operate the London Gatwick air traffic control tower and they have successfully increased the number of air traffic controllers over recent months.
“So far this year (2024) London Gatwick has safely handled more than 170,000 flights through NATS, a 4% increase on last year. The NATS service has been fully available more than 99.6% of the time, operating 24 hours a day. London Gatwick typically has 800 or more flight ‘movements’ a day from a single runway.
“We will continue to work closely with the NATS leadership team to provide passengers and airlines with a good service. London Gatwick would like to apologise to any passengers who experienced disruption yesterday.”
Staff shortages at NATS has been an ongoing problem since COVID. After last year’s ATC outage over the August bank holiday weekend, NATS said it would ‘take some time’ to increase staffing levels in the control tower, saying it expected ‘further resilience’ to be in place by summer 2024. In July this year, Ryanair apologised for ‘excessive’ flight delays, which it blamed on ATC staff shortages.
Separately, the Independent reports British Airways cancelled 240 flights, affecting around 40,000 passengers between Friday and Sunday.
BA said: “We operate hundreds of flights every day without disruption, successfully getting tens of thousands of our customers to where they need to be.
“Along with other airlines, we’ve had to make some small adjustments to our schedule because of air traffic control restrictions caused by adverse weather.
“Whilst the vast majority of our customers will be unaffected, we apologise for any inconvenience caused and our teams are working hard to help get journeys back on track.”
Between 2-8 September, 427 flights were cancelled departing UK airports, equating to 2% of all scheduled departures, which is up 223% on the previous week, according to Cirium.
A further 408 arrivals into UK airports were cancelled during the same seven-day period, equating to 2% of all scheduled arrivals
Travel Gossip has asked easyJet for a comment.
The post Gatwick apologises after ATC staff shortages cause flight cancellations appeared first on Travel Gossip.
Continue reading...
