The company in charge of air traffic control in the UK has confirmed it is calculating a rebate for airlines in the wake of recent aviation disruption.
It comes as the chief executive of National Air Traffic Services (Nats) Richard Deakin, apologised to MPs after as many as 120 flights were cancelled and 500 delayed by an average of 45 minutes during the issues last Friday
Deakin also tried to reassure MPs there would be no repeat of the meltdown that disrupted travel plans of 10,000 passengers in the runup to Christmas.
Richard Deakin, chief executive of Nats, apologised for a computer glitch that caused disruption to airline passengers last Friday.
Deakin, who was paid £1.05m last year including a £272,000 bonus despite a previous air traffic control failure in December 2013, said he was not proud of the disruption, but said it was unrealistic to expect the system to be foolproof.
“I think for those passengers it was unacceptable and from our point of view, yes, we’re not proud of what happened on Friday night but I think we are proud of how we responded to it,” he told the Commons transport committee.
Patrick McLoughlin, the transport secretary, had described the problem as unacceptable.
Deakin said the problem that caused the delays would not occur again and ruled out any further delays in the runup to Christmas. But he refused to rule out any future disruptions as other elements of the complex air traffic control system could encounter problems.
“Any complex system will have failures in it. I think it’s unrealistic to expect that a system such as Nats never has any reduction in capacity due to those failures,” he said.
Labour MP Tom Harris, a former transport minister, said Deakin appeared “incredibly complacent” about the issue. “Your evidence so far has kind of given the impression that everything’s fine,” he said. “You seem to be suggesting that what happened on Friday was a bit of a nuisance but you’re ticking the box, you’re taking a couple of hours out of your day to appear before us but after that it’s fine.”
Deakin denied the accusation, saying a “huge amount of time” had been spent making sure systems were performing to the best of their ability.
He refuted any suggestion that Nats systems were ancient or antiquated. “Just because technology is ‘old’ it does not necessarily mean that it is not fit for purpose,” he said.
An independent inquiry will be held in to the disruption.
In a statement, the company said: “Nats confirms that there will be a financial consequence for the company from the delay caused by the technical problem at Swanwick on 12 December 2014.
“Customers will receive a rebate on charges in the future. The amount is being calculated and will be notified to customers in due course.”
• This article was amended on 18 December 2014. An earlier version said Nats was calculating a rebate for passengers; it is airlines that will receive the rebate, not passengers.
