It has emerged that London Gatwick will extend its flight cap for another two weeks as it continues to battle against NATS staff shortages.
This has been an emerging problem in the last few weeks, which has affected thousands of passengers and is starting to annoy the airlines.
Without further ado, let’s get into it…
London Gatwick Flight Cap Extended For Two More Weeks…
As per TravelMole, a spokesperson commented on this flight cap extension for London Gatwick Airport:
“Following further discussions with NATS and the airlines, the airport has decided to extend the temporary limit.”
“The limit will be kept under review while we continue to work with NATS on their staffing challenges.”
This will no doubt create more anger and resistance from Ryanair, who have remained very vocal about this chaos that is ensuing in London Gatwick.
[monsterinsights_popular_posts_inline]
Ryanair CEO O’Leary went into quite some detail about NATS’ activity over the last four weeks, from the IT failure, all of the way through to this week’s flight cancellations at London Gatwick due to staff illness.
“The UK ATC failure on 28/29 August caused 2,000 cancellations alongside 5,000 delays for Ryanair”, he said to the press in a briefing.
He also confirmed that the two days of NATS disruption cost Ryanair £15m, and with this in mind, confirmed to journalists that the airline would be seeking legal action over this.
The Ryanair CEO also mentioned that he feels like the UK ATC system is the most inefficient in the Ryanair network, stating that “the French system is better when they’re not on strike”.
It is also understood that London Gatwick asked Ryanair to cancel flights due to ATC capacity issues, and that O’Leary personally rejected this request.
“NATS is staffed sufficiently, or overstaffed. However, they do not turn up to work”, he also said to journalists.
All eyes will be on NATS and the airport to see how long it will take to get this situation under control so then they can get back to full capacity.
Click the banner to subscribe to our weekly newsleter.
