EasyJet has made the necessary arrangements to transport stranded customers back to Gatwick airport, as problems with UK’s air traffic system continues to cause delays and flight cancelations.
However, the airline company has announced that the first of its two return flights would leave the UK today to pick up customers from Faro, Portugal, and Palma, Mallorca.
Also, flights to Tenerife in the Spanish Canary Islands, Enfidha in Tunisia, and Rhodes in Greece, have been scheduled to take off on Thursday and Friday, respectively.
“During this traditionally very busy week for travel, options for returning to the UK are more limited on some routes.”
EasyJet Airline.
Arline companies have estimated that, the incident would cost the business around £100 million.
According to the Director of International Air Transport Association, Willie Walsh, airline companies would suffer massive losses to the tune of “tens of millions,” but, he warned that, it’s too early to quantify cost.
“I would imagine at an industry level we’ll be getting close to £100m of additional costs that airlines have encountered as a result of this failure.”
Director of International Air Transport Association, Willie Walsh.
According to Walsh, flights were called off from four major airports in UK on Monday, affecting over thousands of travels in and out of the country.
He added that, it’s frustrating to recognize that, there has been only one piece of information that the Air Traffic Services has provided.
“This is what really frustrates and angers airlines. This was completely outside the control of the airlines and yet airlines are subject to paying customers for delays, for cancellations, for looking after them, which is very considerable.”
“It’s very unfair because the air traffic control system, which was at the heart of this failure, doesn’t pay a single penny.”
Director of International Air Transport Association, Willie Walsh.
Walsh further claimed that, he has the believe that the National Air Traffic Services would cover the cost incurred by the airline companies.
Additionally, the Chief Executive Officer of the National Air Traffic Service, Martin Rolfe revealed that a session of the air traffic system got crushed because, it couldn’t recognize an information sent to it.
The CEO’s comment further substantiate conclusions that anonymous sources within the company have made that, the system crushed as a result of a “doggy” flight schedule filed by a French airline.
Rolfe expressed regret over the inconveniencies caused to customers, and emphasized that the organization had not undervalued the severity of the disruption.
“We worked absolutely as quickly as we could to make sure we could safely restore the service.”
“Almost all the time it handles it absolutely perfectly. In fact, this is staggering, in the sense that it is incredibly rare. And we make it our business to make sure it is incredibly rare.”
Martin Rolfe, Chief Executive Officer of the National Air Traffic Service.
When asked why the flight data that caused many disruptions hasn’t been discarded “like a spam,” Rolfe responded that, information cannot be just discarded because it’s not fit for purpose.
“Our systems are safety-critical systems; they are dealing with the lives of passengers and the traveling public. So even things like just throwing data away need to be carefully considered.
“If you throw away a critical piece of data, you may end up in the next 30 seconds, a minute or an hour with something that then is not right on the screens in front of the controller.”
Chief Executive Officer of the National Air Traffic Service.
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