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For a fourth day, thousands of passengers flying to and from the UK have had their flights cancelled after a combination of bad weather and air-traffic control staff shortage led to hundreds of flights being axed.
Around 3,500 passengers expecting to fly to or from London Gatwick on 20 flights on Monday morning have been grounded. Most are booked on easyJet, which cancelled its first flight of the day, to Ibiza, and six others including links to Naples and Nice.
Passengers were told the cause was “air-traffic control restrictions” and outside the airline’s control.
The cancellations are in addition to 64 flights grounded by easyJet on Sunday due to short-notice staff shortage in Gatwick’s control tower.
At least 100 flights were cancelled on Sunday evening at Gatwick, and others ran extremely late – such as the Wizz Air flight to Rome that was due to arrive soon after midnight but actually arrived in the Italian capital shortly before 6am, and an easyJet departure to Lyon that ran four hours behind schedule.
It was the third incident of mass cancellations due to staff shortage in the Gatwick control tower in less than a year.
The tower is run by the air-navigation provider Nats, which said on Sunday night it was trying to “keep disruption to a minimum”.
A spokesperson said:“Temporary air-traffic restrictions are currently in place at London Gatwick Airport in order to maintain safety. These restrictions are due to short-notice staff absence at the air traffic control tower and in addition to existing restrictions already in place due to adverse weather across UK and Europe.
“We expect all restrictions to be lifted by the end of the day.”
But as cancellations continued into Monday, Ryanair once again called for the resignation of Martin Rolfe, chief executive of Nats. A spokesperson for Europe’s biggest budget airline said: “This is the latest in a long line of cock-ups by UK Nats, which has yet again disrupted multiple flights and thousands of passengers at Gatwick.”
The Independent has contacted Nats for a response.
EasyJet said on Sunday evening that it was “extremely disappointed that customers are once again being impacted by this”.
A former Labour cabinet minister and acting chair of the Transport Select Committee has called for a “change of leadership” at the Sussex airport.
Ben Bradshaw said: “This is a complete disgrace that’s been for going on for years.
“Gatwick needs a change in leadership. In the mean time I recommend Luton airport – many of the same destinations and minimal delays.”
The Sussex hub is the busiest single-runway airport in the world, with 800 or more flight movements each day.
A Gatwick 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 four per cent increase on last year.
“The Nats service has been fully available more than 99.6 per cent of the time, operating 24 hours a day.”
“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.
In terms of the sheer scale of disruption over one of the busiest weekends of the year, British Airways passengers trying to fly to or from London Heathrow have been worst affected.
Between Friday and Sunday BA cancelled 240 flights, affecting around 40,000 passengers. On Monday the airline had grounded a further eight departures and arrivals at Heathrow, plus six at Gatwick.
One passenger, Mike C, wrote on X: “This morning BA cancelled 1pm flight at 4.15am. Helpline not open till 6am. Had to get refund and book with another carrier – cash flow.”
A spokesperson for British Airways 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.”
