Airport disruptions today UK: More flights cancelled as ‘dodgy French flight plan’ blamed for air traffic chaos

With planes suck on the tarmac for hours yesterday, pilots were keeping families entertained by giving children tours of the cockpit as they waited for news of a possible departure.

Gwen Magarotto told The Independent that her son Spencer and his family were forced to “sit it out” on the tarmac at Corfu after their flight to Exeter was delayed.

But for her 11-year-old grandson Danny, who “adores planes”, the experience became the “highlight of his holiday” after the “kind” pilot allowed him to sit in the plane’s cockpit while explaining what all of the various dials and mechanisms were.

Ms Margarotto said her grandson had been “over the moon”, but was soon left “freezing” once their plane finally touched down back in Exeter following their holiday in the Greek sun.

You can read more stories from those caught up in yesterday’s chaos here:

Aviation analytics company Cirium said 790 departures and 785 arrivals were cancelled across all UK airports on Monday.

That was equivalent to around 27 per cent of all planned flights and means that around 250,000 people were affected.

Our Politics and Whitehall Editor Kate Devlin reports:

Downing Street has said that airlines should be “proactively” communicating with passengers about their rights and taking “every possible steps” to communicate with their passengers about the disruption they are facing.

And No 10 did not rule out that an error by a French airline could have caused the chaos.

It’s the £80m question: Why are airlines facing enormous financial losses while their passengers endure extreme distress?

The last week of August is a time of high demand for air travel, especially from returning holidaymakers. Because of the UK’s limited airport infrastructure, especially in southeast England, there is precious little slack in the system: Heathrow and Gatwick are, respectively, the busiest two-runway and single-runway airports in the world.

So the UK’s normally well-regarded air traffic control (ATC) system needed to be working perfectly on bank holiday Monday.

The Independent’s travel expert Simon Calder looks at what may have gone wrong in his latest Plane Talk analysis:

Hundreds of flights have been cancelled again today, after some 1,200 flights were grounded on Monday in what marked the worst day for UK aviation since the Iceland volcano in 2010 .

Analysis of flight data websites by the PA news agency shows at least 281 flights were cancelled on Tuesday at the UK’s six busiest airports.

This consisted of 75 at Gatwick, 74 at Heathrow, 63 at Manchester, 28 at Stansted, 23 at Luton and 18 at Edinburgh.

Many other flights were significantly delayed.

The Independent’s travel correspondent Simon Calder reports:

Several sources have told me that a French airline filed a dodgy flight plan that made no digital sense. The Nats system should automatically have identified an anomaly and spat out the plan, saying “try again”.

Yet instead, the flight plan was ingested and set in train a shutdown of the entire system. The closest analogy I can come up with is a spanner being thrown into an extremely well-tuned machine – let’s say an aircraft engine – and shutting the whole thing down. The big question Nats has to answer is: why wasn’t there protection against said spanner, and what is being done to avoid a repeat?

Safety was never an issue: UK air-traffic control has a well-deserved reputation for superb professionalism. But with so much emotional and financial cost being paid by passengers and airlines, the air-traffic control provider has some explaining to do. Very soon.

If you’re just joining us, here’s everything you need to know about the air-traffic control failure that led to thousands of flights being cancelled across the UK on Monday:

Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary has said it’s “not acceptable” that the national air-traffic control service “simply allow their computer systems to be taken down”, in a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter).

“It’s not acceptable that UK Nats simply allow their computer systems to be taken down, and everybody’s flights get cancelled or delayed,” Mr O’Leary said in a video statement, addressing the travel chaos that gripped the Bank Holiday weekend.

Downing Street did not rule out the possibility that an inputting error by a French airline could have caused the disruption.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “There’s going to be, think you’ll know that there’s going to be an investigation by the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) and a report shared with Government.

“I think (Transport Secretary) Mark Harper confirmed this morning he’ll be getting that in days.

“I’m not going to pre-empt that. I’ve seen, obviously, various bits of speculation, but I’m not going to pre-empt the work that needs to be done.”

But he added that experts had confirmed it was a “technical issue, not a cybersecurity incident”.

Asked if officials would speak to counterparts across the English Channel, the spokesman said “you would expect them to be speaking regularly” with other countries “but I’m not aware of any specific conversations with French counterparts”.

Some passengers stranded overseas as a result of Monday’s air-traffic control shutdown are telling The Independent that they have been offered flights in one week’s time.

In a week when millions are returning to the UK, there is immense pressure on capacity – and at least 300,000 people with flight cancellations are adding to that.

Passengers whose flights have been grounded go to the back of the queue. But in previous episodes of extreme disruption, long enforced stays abroad are rare.

The scale of the problem diminishes because travellers planning short breaks who are unable to travel out often cancel the whole trip; some passengers find alternative ways to get home, eg on trains or ferries from Continental Europe; and to distant destinations such as the Canary Islands and Turkey, airlines will often put on rescue flights.

These are most likely to happen on Wednesday and Thursday, before what is expected to be an extremely high-pressure weekend for inbound travel to the UK.