Following last week's ATC failure in the UK, which delayed and canceled hundreds of flights on a bank holiday weekend, easyJet’s CEO has responded to the incident, saying it must never happen again.

“Must not happen again”

The failure in ATC services, which is estimated to cost €100 million ($126 million), brought aviation in the UK to a halt last week. In response, one of the UK’s largest airlines, easyJet has recently called for a full public investigation and for the findings to be made public. In a statement, the CEO, Johan Lundgren, said,

“Passengers deserve to see a full independent review, which not only results in meaningful improvements to prevent an incident of this scale happening again but also considers a wide range of issues beyond this incident, including staffing levels required at NATS’ to deliver today’s flying and what modernisation is needed to deliver the flying of tomorrow.”

NATS said recently that it is conducting a thorough investigation into the incident and will publish any findings. easyJet responded last week to the incident by offering passengers free changes or refunds in the wake of the widespread cancellations. Lundgren also said that easyJet has been focusing on getting its operation back on schedule and getting passengers where they need to be, noting, “We have been absolutely focused this week on helping our customers impacted by the ATC failure return home.”

The airline has also, in response, sent out additional aircraft to certain destinations where delays and cancelations were prevalent. British Airways also reduced its capacity on its business class product on its popular European routes by making the middle seat available.

The easyJet boss also hit back at the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) by saying:

“An incident of this scale should not have happened and must not happen again in the future.”

Situation recovering

Just recently, the UK Secretary for Transport said that most passengers who have been affected by the incident have now reached their final situation. Mark Harper MP said that “the failure came during one of the busiest weeks of the year for aviation and that airlines have taken every step possible to increase capacity where possible, including adding extra flights and putting on larger aircraft.”

It is believed that an incorrectly filed flight plan by an undisclosed airline is the cause of the ATC meltdown that lasted roughly several hours. NATS controllers, as a result, had to manually fill out flight plans for one of the busiest airspaces in the world. Martin Rolfe, the chief executive of NATS, said:

“Our systems, both primary and the back-ups, responded by suspending automatic processing to ensure that no incorrect safety-related information could be presented to an air traffic controller or impact the rest of the air traffic system. There are no indications that this was a cyber-attack.”

Other bosses in the aviation industry are expressing their displeasure with NATS and the incident. Former IAG boss and current Director General of IATA, Willie Walsh, said, “I fear we will see a continuing failure to improve the reliability, cost efficiency, and environmental performance of air traffic control. The current system does not protect passengers. It hurts them.”