UK passengers hit with massive delays after second air traffic control issue in two weeks
Air passengers in the UK have been warned that they may experience serious delays to their journeys after a 'technical issue' struck Scotland.
The National Air Traffic Service (NATS) said that engineers had been called in to Prestwick to deal with a matter that is impacting travel across Scotland and the north of England.
This round of disruptions is not connected to the issue that so recently affected over 2,000 flights and hundreds of thousands of journeys, it is a separate matter causing its own level of disturbance to people trying to get where they're going.
Various passenger complaints from affected airports have been raised, with Edinburgh Airport confirming they were experiencing delays and Ryanair saying that flights between the UK and Republic of Ireland were being affected.
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Passengers are being urged to check with their airline to see what the level of disruption is, and whether there may be compensation.
A NATS spokesperson said: "Our engineers are continuing to investigate the issue at our Prestwick centre in Scotland.
“Airports south of Manchester are broadly unaffected, however flights heading north and flights departing Scottish airports are currently subject to some delay.
“Passengers should check with their airlines. This is unrelated to the issue two weeks ago. We apologise for the disruption.”
North of that is where the disruption largely appears to reside, and the delays have also impacted Belfast International Airport, as they've said they were experiencing 'some delays to flights'.
They've told people 'if you do not have a confirmed flight, please do not travel to the airport'.
Given the two serious problems occurring within the same month, easyJet have said it 'calls into question the resilience of NATS’ systems' as they raised the matter of the previous major delays.
Their spokesperson said: "A NATS air traffic control system failure in its Prestwick centre is causing delays to flights with some unable to operate.
“This, once again, calls into question the resilience of NATS’ systems and demonstrates the need for firm actions to prevent these repeated failures.
“We will do all we can minimise the impact of this for our customers and advise anyone due to fly today to check our flight tracker for the latest information.”
Highlands and Islands Airports Limited posted a message on their site warning that Dundee, Inverness and Islay were all affected by the disruption.
“Due to a technical issue at Prestwick, flight schedules are currently being impacted across all our airports. Please contact your airline for the latest flight information.”
Joe Harker