Travel chaos: Belfast flights delayed by up to two hours as airport disruption drags on for second day
Travellers are hit by yet more air chaos this evening as flights to and from Belfast airports face delays of up to two hours.
Both Belfast City Airport and Belfast International were suffering late arrivals and departures as disruption from a system issue that yesterday hit the National Air Traffic Service (Nats) dragged on.
Flights to and from London airports were particularly badly affected, with some not touching down until around two hours after they were expected – for example, one British Airways plane from London City to Belfast City was supposed to land at 4.35pm, but was estimated to arrive at 6.30pm; another from Heathrow was delayed from 5.35pm to 7.15pm.
Departures saw similar setbacks, with a 6.20pm to Heathrow not leaving until after 8pm; another at 7.40pm was to be so delayed it wouldn’t leave until 8.50pm – pushing it later than the subsequent Heathrow plane, which was supposed to be the final one of the day and at the time of publishing was still set to leave on time at 8.35pm.
Belfast City saw a couple of London flights cancelled altogether this morning; the rest of the day’s did take to the air, but a spokeswoman for the airport confirmed that hefty delays seen late in the afternoon and into the evening were entirely down to knock-on effects from Nats disruption.
International airport hosts far fewer London routes, but was still suffering setbacks to its EasyJet and Ryanair flights.
A 3.05pm to Malaga didn’t take off until 4.20pm, for example, while a 5.40pm to Edinburgh wasn’t set to leave until 7.40pm. Delays also hit its arrivals, though predictions showed that International’s night flights were set to get back on schedule.
The small airport at Londonderry was also hit, with a flight from Heathrow due in at 10.15am not touching down until shortly after noon, while a 3.35pm from Manchester was over an hour late.
Meanwhile Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told MPs she did not believe the UK-wide air traffic control problems were “unavoidable”.
Addressing the House of Commons, she stated: “A four-hour air traffic outage [on Tuesday] left hundreds of thousands of passengers facing cancellations, diversions, and delays.
“I would like to apologise wholeheartedly to passengers for this disruption.
“We often take for granted the way in which our aviation system just works, but yesterday that was not the case.
“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.
“So, while my understanding from Nats is that we can rule out a cyber-attack on this occasion, I do not believe this issue was unavoidable.”
Ms Alexander has asked the Civil Aviation Authority to conduct an independent review into the incident, which is due to report to her within six months.
Nats has also said a full investigation will be conducted.
British Airways said the fault forced it to cancel almost 550 flights across the UK, impacting more than 85,000 passengers. The airline issued apologies.