Air traffic control down over UK currently

[Margoliciously]

Anyone else heard this? A national shutdown of air traffic control as system goes down.

@DyslexicPoster

There isn't enough spare capacity at the airlines/airports for many, if any, extra flights.

I suspect the plan now will be for the airlines to run flights as normal, carrying those already booked on those flights (to avoid disrupting a whole new batch of travellers).

Those who were disrupted yesterday will have to hope there are spare seats...that's probably why some people disrupted yesterday are being told next seat free to book is in several days..

Really sorry to hear about cancelled holidays.

never had a cancelled holiday but had a cancelled flight home once due to atc strike which almost spoiled the holiday- Notification of cancellation on day 2 then spent most of the the rest of the week trying to figure out how the f to get home.

when I was a child if you had a flight booked you went to the airport and you went. Not so straightforward these days. Always a stress. We are hopefully off tomorrow but as with last time my message to the dc is “we’re going to go to the airport to see if we can hopefully get on a plane”

Ds didn’t make it back. His plane was out of position so BA substituted a smaller plane and a third of the passengers got bumped. He’s now stuck an another continent waiting for an alternative flight to become available. He may get on one tomorrow but it will involve a couple of transfers and lay overs rather than a direct route. I suspect this will be a not uncommon story today

We’re heading back to Heathrow from Edinburgh this afternoon. All flights are showing a couple of hours delay which seems fairly reasonable given the chaos of yesterday. I just hope they don’t cancel as Edinburgh is v expensive and I don’t really want to have to pay for another night plus another day of parking at Heathrow.
Can’t really complain though as at least I’m on the same land mass.

I'm so glad to hear you have something else to look forward to! Yes, they are meeting up today to rebook something. DD is determined not to unpack her case .

Jet2 appear to just be keeping people at the airport indefinitely. Not sure which is worse.

I flew with Jet2 yesterday afternoon. Boarding was delayed by half an hour. They wanted us on the plane so that they could take advantage of the first available slot. In the end we were only two hours late arriving.

Jet2, as in the cabin crew and the pilots, handled the whole situation extremely well in my opinion. So did the passengers.

So sorry for all of you missing holidays or, even worse, stuck elsewhere not knowing when /how you can get home.

DD and I flew to Krakow from Leeds Bradford early this morning with Ryanair, no delay. Leeds/Bradford Airport seems completely back to normal. I was awake checking my phone for cancellation messages half the night.

We've never flown from that airport before, I'm grateful we did today.

I hope you all manage to get a break somewhere, even if it's in the UK

We've had to book flights for tomorrow with another airline. Ryan air confirmed they will reimburse. Very anxious still

Great news @huggiess, hope it all goes smoothly from here and you enjoy your holiday!

I'm glad you got there. Unfortunately our holiday was cancelled

I’m sorry to hear that. Looking at the departure lists for this morning and yesterday, it looks like we were lucky. Ryanair look to be particularly badly affected.

So sad for the people with outbound holidays cancelled. It's time they scrapped compensation and put it into a resilience scheme with someone like the RAF so outbounds can be caught up over night (suspend night flying restrictions) ASAP. We've had both a 24hrs delay outbound which was devastating and a 32 hour delay inbound which was just one of those things.

I’m not convinced that the RAF would have suitable aircraft or the capacity to make any appreciable difference.

Accommodation and transport between accommodation and airport until the earliest flight back can be arranged.

Sadly Ryanair doesn’t have a good reputation when it comes to customer service (or being helpful in any way, shape or form).

Please don’t let them fob you off. They’re trying to get away with it and hope people give up.

I had an issue with a cancellation with them in 2017. I’ve sworn never to fly with them until hell freezes over. Have so far stuck to it, although it did get a bit chilly down there during Covid.

Stand your ground (excuse the pun 😝)

xx

@@sleepyscientist

It's time they scrapped compensation and put it into a resilience scheme with someone like the RAF so outbounds can be caught up over night (suspend night flying restrictions) ASAP.

What @Oakbeam said.

The RAF's transport fleet capacity these days is relatively tiny compared with the various airlines' fleets and I'm not sure what fraction of the RAFs small amount of suitable aircraft would be available to step in and help fix a situation like this.

FWIW many airports have quite limited restrictions overnight, especially for newer aircraft, and in extremis those night restrictions that do exist can sometimes be flexed, at least slightly...

Thanks @MendedDrum it's been a massive pita contacting travel company etc too about the hotel, also we have lost our transfers now so that's more cost ! They've told us Ryan air should give us that back lol not going to hold my breath

@Oakbeam @BabyShaark I'm thinking more along the lines of training RAF pilots to fly civilian aircraft so they can land pick up the outbound take them to the destination and then board a luggage free inbound quickly (easyJet style find a seat and sit in it) luggage can be brought back as cargo at a later date. I would also drop all catering etc from these to get people on holiday quicker. Over time could also expand air tanker etc to have more available with some profit margin to feed back into the RAF and would have the pilot civilian type rated ready for leaving the RAF which is a bonus for them.

Our local airport has quite strict night flying restrictions and had a 2nd runway rejected plus an extension so can't take a 787 at full take off weight.

Thank you 😊

As it stands you need a commercial civil training and then a civil licence to fly commercial operations on anything with a civilian registration... that applies pretty worldwide..

The pilot then needs a type rating on a specific aircraft type to operate that type...For safety reason CAA/ most regulators only allow one rating, maybe two in selected circumstances on similar types (e.g 777/787 or 757/777).

Having got the rating on type you then have to stay recent by flying "your" specific aircraft on a frequent basis (usually no more than a handful of weeks between trips on type, otherwise it's back to the sim for recency before being let lose on the paying public)..again this is for passenger safety.

Fundamentally the regulators are not going to allow somebody military rated on say an A330 (air Tanker) to leap into an A320, and even more certainly not a 737 at a few hours or even a days notice to operate something like an ad-hoc Manchester-Palma and back to repatriate stranded passengers....

In terms of expanding Air Tanker..if the idea is to have it A330's stand-by to provide cover for event such as yesterday you'd probably need several hundred airframes...currently the RAF have roughly 50 transport aircraft, by way of comparison BA have >250 aircraft, Easyjet similar/slightly more, Ryanair Europe wide well over 500).

Best the RAF could manage to help in current circumstances is maybe move a few hundred passengers out of a few selected destinations.

Agree raf have got better things to be doing than rescuing delayed holidaymakers, though am sure they have been used in very difficult evacuation scenarios in the past

however there are airlines that exist purely to sub contract their planes (and often but not always crews) to mainstream airlines. Now this time of year lots of them will be already subcontracted out but I’m still surprised that airlines haven’t made use of third parties to help. Part of the reason will be that for example LHR and LGW are so congested there are no more slots available, but there will be at other airports.

Thank you we're here. We flew with Jet2 and really can't fault them. 20 minutes delay on take off but everything else very smooth.

Still at Edinburgh with a 3 hour delay now. Not a single BA staff member. Annoyingly had we known about the delay this morning, I would have cancelled the flight and just got on the train, leaving 3 seats available on the flight. But because the delay wasn’t announced until we got here and also there’s no one here to ask how I cancel a flight and if I can rebook or book a train instead, we have to sit here for hours and then take up three seats instead.
Also the website is down and there’s no answer on the phone.