UK flights to become more expensive following air traffic control failure
The price increase would be in place until 2027
BRITS are being warned of an increase in flight prices by air traffic control despite the huge disruption caused by a failure earlier this year.
The technical issue resulted in thousands of flights being cancelled, with hundreds of thousands of passengers affected.
An investigation launched by the UK’s National Air Traffic Services (Nats) revealed that a flight plan error resulted in the failure, which meant the air space was forced to close down - and only resumed 10 hours later.
However, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has since said Nats could raise the amount it charges airlines by 25 per cent to ensure "safety and quality service".
The fee will rise from £47 to £64 per flight, an increase of 43p per passenger to £2.08 on average.
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This would be in place until 2027.
However, airlines have slammed the move, saying it "cannot be justified" after thousands of passengers were left stranded by the disruption.
Tim Alderslade, chief executive of industry group Airlines UK, said: "This is yet another kick in the teeth for passengers who have been plagued by issues this summer including the August Nats IT failure and will inevitably end up footing the bill of millions of pounds for increases that simply cannot be justified while it remains unclear what action will be taken to ensure airlines and their customers do not see a repeat of this disruption.
"It is clear that a wider independent review into how Nats is regulated is needed to protect passengers and ensure that airlines are not always forced to act as the insurer of last resort and bear millions of pounds of costs for failures that are not their fault.”
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Airlines were forced to pay for emergency accommodation for passengers following the disruption, as well as reroute flights at short notice.
And Loganair boss Jonathan Hinkles said: "This decision is bad news for customers and communities, bad news for the economy - as air fare increases contribute to UK inflation - and bad news for the environment."
Despite this, a Nats spokesperson said the increase in price and August failure were not related.
They added: “This regulatory decision does not directly address the impacts of the flight planning system failure on August 28, but points to the separate review they are undertaking of it.
"Provision for meeting service targets (notably average delay per flight) is, however, a core element of the framework."
The August air traffic control failure was the worst single day’s disruption to UK flying since the Icelandic volcano in 2010.
As many as 200,000 passengers were hit by the delayed and cancelled flights due to the Nats outage over the August bank holiday.
Just weeks later, another NATS glitch resulted in 58 flights being cancelled to and from London Gatwick.
This was caused by "short notice sickness" in its ATC tower which resulted in a restriction in the number of planes that could take off.
