Air traffic control – latest: Airlines demand compensation reform as NATS outage sees 2,000 flights cancelled

British Airways has made at least a dozen short-haul cancellations to Thursday. Two flights from London Heathrow to Berlin and back are grounded, along with flights to Brussels. Jersey, Luxembourg and Naples.

BA has extended its “postpone for free” option for short-haul flights departing up to and including Friday 1 September.

Passengers are being told when checking in online: “Your flight is due to depart as planned but, in order to offer you more flexibility, we’re giving you the option to move your booking.”

The airline is also extending the temporary policy of filling the middle seat in the Club Europe (business class) cabin on inbound European routes. The aim is to increase capacity for stranded travellers.

At the height of holiday season travellers are still facing disruption following a failure of the main air-traffic control system across the UK.

As a result of the system failure on bank holiday Monday, almost 1,600 flights were cancelled – grounding around 250,000 holidaymakers.

On Tuesday, around 300 departures were cancelled as airlines struggled with aircraft and crew being out of position.

Wednesday has seen further disruption for holidaymakers, with more than 2,000 flights grounded in total.

Many stranded travellers have been left wondering whether they can claim compensation and what airlines are required to do to help them. Others are concerned about future holidays and how long before things will return to normal.

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Hundreds of thousands of passengers booked to travel to or from the UK have had their flights cancelled or delayed after the air-traffic control system was hit by a technical issue.

The National Air Traffic Services (NATS), the country’s leading provider of air traffic control services, said it had applied traffic flow restrictions on Monday to maintain safety.

The group announced later that the issue had been “identified and remedied”. But passengers are still facing travel chaos, with more than 500 flights already cancelled and many more delayed.

Here, The Independent’s travel expert Simon Calder explains what you can do if you are caught up in the chaos.

Gatwick’s chief executive has labelled the UK air traffic control outage “unacceptable.”

“I’m sure everybody, including Nats, as a result of that will want to see even more resilience added to Nats systems so that we don’t see a recurrence of this particular issue,” Stewart Wingate, Gatwick Airport’s chief executive, told the Financial Times, labelling the IT problem “unacceptable.”

Britain’s largest budget airline will send “rescue flights” for passengers stranded abroad by air traffic control chaos.

As hundreds of flights were cancelled on Tuesday, easyJet confirmed it would operate five repatriation flights to London Gatwick over the coming days.

The rescue flights will operate from Palma and Faro on 30 August, Tenerife and Enfidha on 31 August and Rhodes on 1 September.

More than 1,200 flights to, from and within the UK were grounded by the failure at the national air traffic provider Nats, with around 200,000 people sleeping at airports overnight.

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The Independent’s Travel Correspondent Simon Calder has outlined how stranded Brits can get money back from airlines following the air traffic control failure.

Simon has clarified the difference between compensation and reimbursements.

He said: “If your flight is cancelled, the airline has a strict obligation to deliver a duty of care.

“This includes getting you back as soon as possible, getting you a hotel room, getting your meals. All of that the airline has to do and if they’re not booking a hotel for you, then you keep the receipts and claim it back.

“But, nobody is going to get cash compensation because it’s clearly not the airline’s fault.”

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A sales executive who estimated he and his wife were “about £2,200 out of pocket” after their flight from Crete was cancelled due to an air traffic control glitch are hopeful about receiving compensation after initially being denied by easyJet.

Tom Perry, 31, told the PA news agency on Tuesday that their easyJet flights for the night before from Heraklion airport to Luton had been cancelled due to the glitch.

The couple, based in Cornwall, were offered new easyJet flights home for the following Monday, free of charge, which they accepted as “that was the only [direct flights] available” at the time, Mr Perry said.

Mr Perry said: “Then, about an hour later, I looked online and found one that goes from Crete airport this coming Friday with Jet2, so we booked with them to go back to Bristol.”

The couple paid £1,172 for the Friday flights and requested a refund for the Monday return flights the couple were no longer availing of, but easyJet had declined.

The flight cancellation forced the couple to pay for an extended stay at their accommodation in Sissi for around £250, a parking space for additional days at Luton airport for around £120, and an extended stay for their dog at a kennel.

Mr Perry’s wife, Ella, 27, is an NHS nurse who could “lose pay or annual leave”, he said.

He said he “spent six hours on live chats and calls, albeit probably 4.5 hours was trying to get through” and easyJet were “refusing to refund”.

On Wednesday morning, easyJet provided the couple with the opportunity to apply for compensation for the expenses they have accumulated due to the flight disruption.

Mr Perry told the PA news agency: “Obviously I’m not going to get my hopes up too much until it comes through but yeah, obviously, it does make a difference.

“The lady on the phone today has been really, really helpful, but what I can’t quite understand is why we weren’t offered this option yesterday.”

The airport experience is rarely a pleasant one at the best of times, but as the summer holidays draw to a close this year, it has become even more fraught with stress and frustration.

Air traffic control (ATC) issues led to the cancellation of more than 2,000 flights across 28, 29 and 30 August, with hundreds of thousands of travellers’ plans impacted.

There is a simple way to sidestep the chaos, though: avoid the airport entirely. An increasing number of travel companies are offering flight-free trips, whether by rail or ferry, removing the possibility that ATC failures can play havoc with your highly anticipated holiday itinerary.

Airlines have demanded compensation reform as air traffic control chaos has seen 2,000 flights cancelled across Europe.

More than 2,000 flights have been cancelled in the last three days, following an hours-long air control system failure that sent flight schedules into meltdown and left thousands of travellers stranded.

Industry body Iata projected a £100m loss in revenue for airlines as customers reclaim the costs for food, accommodation and alternative travel, urging the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to review the compensation system and make the National Air Traffic Services (Nats) contribute to the cost.

“It’s very unfair because the air traffic control system, which was at the heart of this failure, doesn’t pay a single penny”, Willie Walsh, the director general of Iata, told the BBC.

He added that the UK should “look at the way passenger compensation is dealt with to ensure that the people who are responsible for the delays and cancellations ultimately bear the costs.”

Hundreds of thousands of passengers booked to travel to or from the UK have had their flights cancelled or delayed after the air-traffic control system was hit by a technical issue.

The National Air Traffic Services (NATS), the country’s leading provider of air traffic control services, said it had applied traffic flow restrictions on Monday to maintain safety.

The group announced later that the issue had been “identified and remedied”. But passengers are still facing travel chaos, with more than 500 flights already cancelled and many more delayed.

Here, The Independent’s travel expert Simon Calder explains what you can do if you are caught up in the chaos.