Hundreds of thousands of passengers hit by Britain’s air traffic control meltdown are unlikely to be entitled to compensation.
The UK Civil Aviation Authority is carrying out a review of chaos caused this week and has reminded airlines of their obligations to passengers whose flights have been delayed or cancelled. This may include refreshments and accommodation, depending on the length of the flight, and passengers must be offered new flights.
But the disruption caused by the NATS system failure is likely to be considered the result of extraordinary circumstances so more generous compensation for ruined trips won’t be covered.
“This means that although passengers should be looked after by airlines, they are unlikely to be entitled to compensation for delays or cancellations that were directly caused by the incident,” says the UK CAA.
In the first day of the failure, aviation data analysts at OAG found 43% of outbound flights and 29% of inbound flights were cancelled. From the 10 biggest airports about 219,000 passengers would have been disrupted in the first 24 hours.
“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,’’ OAG says.
