Passengers face being stranded at Heathrow and Gatwick for days as 2,000 flights axed

Thousands of passengers may be stranded for days, both at home and abroad, as flight cancellations continue following UK air traffic control technical issues, which have so far affected more than 330,000 people. Weary holidaymakers at airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted slept with their luggage on the floor as others jostled for spare seats and spent hours waiting for airline staff to pick up the phone. The airport repercussions of the technical fault may continue for some days as airlines dealt with knock-on impacts. Shorts Aviation analytics company Cirium said as of 5.30pm that 357 flights had been cancelled or not taken off at UK airports on Wednesday, with an additional 2,000 flights affected over the last two days. This has so far impacted 330,000 passengers since the fault began, according to industry body Airlines UK. The association said more than 155,000 passengers had had flights cancelled, while flights had been delayed for more than 180,000 passengers. British Airways said the fault had forced it to cancel almost 550 of its flights, which had impacted more than 85,000 passengers. The airline said it was “incredibly sorry” to its customers and that the issue had been “entirely out of our control”. Nathalie Stocks, 26, told The i Paper that her flight to Portugal was twice cancelled, leaving her stranded at Gatwick. Following her successive flight cancellations Ms Stocks said she and fellow passengers “were taken down to get our bags at about 7pm and actually got them at about 10pm because the luggage of 40 cancelled flights were all going down one baggage reclaim. “There was one member of staff for thousands and thousands of people. People were getting crushed. It was awful.” Nathalie Stocks was caught up in the airport chaos after her flight to Portugal was cancelled twice (Photo: Supplied) A tearful bride-to-be en route to her wedding in Italy was also among the thousands of passengers stranded following the fault, along with her father who had travelled from his home in Thailand to be there for the ceremony in Ischia. Kevin Turner said he and his daughter arrived at Heathrow early on Wednesday morning to be told their Naples-bound flight had been cancelled. The 77-year-old said: “I’ve come all the way from Thailand just for this wedding and I can’t walk properly because I had a bad operation a couple of years ago – so this will probably be the last time I’ll be able to make this trip, it’s like a golden opportunity and I feel a little bit let down.” They now hope to travel to Gatwick, fly to Milan, catch another flight to Naples early on Thursday and then a boat to Ischia. The wedding is on Sunday, but events start on Friday with a welcome to their friends, who have already arrived. Kevin Turner said his Naples-bound flight had been cancelled (Photo: Sarah Collier/PA) Airline calls on air traffic chief to resign The National Air Traffic Services has apologised for disruption to passengers and airlines, for which its chief executive Martin Rolfe said he took “full responsibility”. Mr Rolfe has come under fire from Wizz Air following the fault, while Ryanair called on him to resign. BA said it has “long made the case for improved resilience in aviation” and issues raised by the system failure need “to be addressed as a matter of urgency”. A BA spokesperson said: “We’ve heard reassurances before, but then we’re faced with issues like this yet again. “Our customers and colleagues are tired of dealing with these issues, time after time. This needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.” Earlier on Wednesday, Downing Street said the Government still had confidence in Mr Rolfe. The Transport Secretary told MPs earlier that she did not believe the air traffic control problems were “unavoidable” and apologised for the disruption. “We often take for granted the way in which our aviation system just works, but yesterday that was not the case,” she told the Commons. Passengers wait for flights and connections at the South terminal of Gatwick Airport on Wednesday (Photo: Dan Kitwood/Getty) “Safety must remain air traffic controllers’ overriding priority, and this morning I have spoken to Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe, who informed me this outage was due to a technical issue at their Swanwick site. She said it was her understanding that a cyber attack was not the cause of the fault, but a further investigation and independent review would be needed, carried out by the Civil Aviation Authority, which will report to her within six months. Nats has also said a full investigation will be conducted into the issue. ‘Safety prioritised over disruption’ Dr Guy Gratton of Cranfield University told The i Paper that despite the chaos Nats had rightly prioritised “safety over disruption”. He said the association was receiving “a lot of flak” from stranded passengers and airlines, but the safety mechanisms in place were “working as intended”. Gratton said the specific air traffic control outage – limited to the UK – could be bypassed by allowing aeroplanes to launch on their own, without Nats oversight, and let on-route controllers detect the planes once in their airspace. “I’m sure somebody has gone off and had a think about that, and they have clearly decided this is not an acceptable risk,” Graddon said. “We should be quite thankful of that – although they are getting a lot of flak, the organisations involved, especially Nats, have clearly prioritised safety over disruption. That should absolutely be the right call. “Whilst a lot of people are fairly peeved, and there’s clearly a few airline chief executives who are particularly peeved, the system is working as intended. When things disrupt, they are making sure everybody is safe first and then worrying about all the other issues – exactly how it should be.”