Irish athletes caught up in delays as up to 100 flights to and from Ireland cancelled

Hundreds of passengers faced spending the night at Dublin Airport on Monday night following the cancellation of their flights.

It followed a systems failure at Britain’s National Air Traffic Service (NATS) which caused the cancellation of just under 100 flights into and out of Dublin Airport. More than 10 flights scheduled to take off and land in both Cork and Shannon also fell victim to the outage.

Eight members of the Gibbons family were stranded in Dublin Airport when their Ryanair flight to Malaga was cancelled.

The plane that was supposed to take them to Spain was stuck in Stansted Airport because of the delays.

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Mark Gibbons said they have had to pay for Aer Lingus flights to the same destination on Tuesday morning as they booked their flights through a travel agency.

“It’s a bummer. It’s the first flight to Malaga that has been cancelled since January and we are on it,” he said.

Liam Curry, who checked in at 1pm for a flight to Izmir in Turkey with his wife Bridget and son Liam jnr, said there was no information that their flight had been cancelled.

“We were told it would be a 20 minute delay. We were told the flight was going to be at 10.45am. Then we were told two o’clock tomorrow.”

Another family from west Cork on their way to Izmir said they were faced with spending the night on the floor of the airport.

Hundreds of people trying to return to Ireland were also affected, including four Irish competitors coming back from the World Athletics Championships.

They were Kelly McGrory and Sophie Becker, who finished eighth in the world 4x400 metres final on Sunday night, along with John Fitzsimons and Mark English.

The athletes were kept on the runway for 3½ hours before being told their flight was cancelled. They were due to spend another night in Budapest before flying from Prague on Tuesday. Staff members of Athletics Ireland, fans and members of the media have also been affected by the delays.

The cancellations threw the travel plans of in excess of 10,000 passengers flying to and from Ireland into disarray with the impact of the system issues felt across Europe.

In a statement just after 3pm, NATS, the main provider of air traffic control services in the UK, said it had “identified and remedied the technical issue” that affected its flight planning system earlier in the day. Use of UK airspace was restricted as a safety measure in response to the issue.

NATS said: “The flight planning issue affected the system’s ability to automatically process flight plans, meaning that flight plans had to be processed manually which cannot be done at the same volume, hence the requirement for traffic flow restrictions.”

Although the problems have been resolved, the travel plans of thousands of people coming to and from Ireland have been thrown into disarray.

For those affected the following consumer advice applies:

* Under EU Regulation 261, airlines must offer you a refund or a rerouting on the next available flight or at a later time of your choosing;

* If you go for the refund, the airline’s responsibility to you ends immediately. If you ask to be put on the next available flight, then the airline must provide care and assistance until you can be accommodated;

* If you are overseas and trying to get home, it has to ensure you have meals and refreshments and cover the cost of hotel accommodation and transport to and from where you are staying;

* If you are alone in the airport, or an airline does not provide the care and assistance it is supposed to provide, make your own reasonable arrangements and keep all receipts because you will need them to claim back reasonable expenses.

While most of the flight cancellations were on routes starting or ending in UK airports, flights from other countries including many from northern and eastern Europe were also impacted due to the restriction on the UK airspace

The DAA – which manages the airports in both Cork and Dublin – urged passengers to check with their airlines to establish the status of flights.

“We advise all passengers due to travel today [Monday] to check the status of their flight with their airline in advance of travelling,” the daa said.

A similar statement was issued by Cork Airport.

“Due to another UK ATC failure, Ryanair will be forced to delay/cancel a number of flights to/from the UK today,” a Ryanair spokeswoman said.

She added all affected passengers will be notified of their options to change flights (free of charge) to another Ryanair flight or receive a full refund.

“We sincerely apologise for this UK ATC failure which is beyond Ryanair’s control and is affecting all airlines operating to/from the UK.”

The statement was echoed by Aer Lingus.

“We’re aware of a failure involving UK National Air-Traffic Service (NATS) flight planning systems, which is outside of Aer Lingus’ control and causing severe restrictions on all flights into the UK and flying over UK airspace today,” a spokeswoman for the airline said.

“We are asking all passengers to check the status of their flight before coming to the airport as delays and cancellations are likely. Passengers with cancelled flights will be contacted directly by Aer Lingus.”

The issues are impacting airports across Britain with the Glasgow-based airline, Loganair, warning customers they may experience delays after a “network-wide failure”. British Airways said it was working closely with NATS to understand the impact.

Manchester Airport and London Stansted warned of potential disruption to flights, while others including London Luton and Birmingham said they were working to understand the impact and the timescale in which normal operations could resume.

Many passengers took to social media to say they were stuck on planes on the tarmac waiting to take off, or being held in airport buildings, in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Israel and elsewhere on what is a traditionally busy travel day as the school holidays draw to a close.

One witness being held on the tarmac at Budapest said their pilot told passengers that a computer failure had closed all UK airspace and they faced an eight- to 12-hour delay.