Ryanair boss slams flight disruption as he provides reason for cancellations

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has slammed air traffic control (ATC) provider Nats for the “unacceptable” disruption caused over the past two days.

In a video message, the chief executive described bank holiday Monday as “a very difficult day” with 250 flights cancelled, while a further 70 were axed on Tuesday. Speaking from the airline’s operations centre at Dublin Airport, Mr O’Leary explained why flights were cancelled.

He said of the previous day's chaos: “I’m sad to report that we had to cancel about 250 flights affecting the flights of about 40,000 passengers because of long delays to flight plans, crews running out of hours.

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“Last night we had 20 aircraft that couldn’t get back to their home bases so they’re out of place for today. Today, unfortunately, it looks like we’re going to cancel about another 70 flights.

“That’s a very small number out of the 3,200 flights we’re planning but that doesn’t mean we’re not doing everything we possibly can to try to minimise the disruption for our passengers and their families.” He added: “We hope by the end of today, Tuesday, that from tomorrow we’ll be running a normal operation.”

He also said he had been in touch with UK Nats, adding: “We still haven’t had an explanation from them (about) what exactly caused this failure yesterday and where were their back-up systems. It’s not acceptable that UK Nats simply allow their computer systems to be taken down and everybody’s flights get cancelled.”

There is speculation the fault was caused by a French airline submitting a flight plan to Nats in the wrong format. Nats would not comment on whether that was accurate. It said on