Ryanair has revealed that more than 1,000 of its flights were cancelled across the UK last month, and has partly blamed two separate failures in Britain's air traffic control system, one of which grounded flights at Bristol Airport.
The airline said the cancellations in September were caused by a software fault at National Air Traffic Services (Nats) on 8 September, followed less than two weeks later by a "connectivity issue" at Nats' Prestwick centre in Scotland on 21 September. Both incidents disrupted flights at Bristol Airport, where passengers faced delays of up to two hours and cancellations to destinations including Barcelona, Nice and Edinburgh during the second failure. Ryanair said the toll was worsened by air traffic controller strikes in Belgium and ash clouds from Mount Etna eruptions affecting European airspace.
"Ryanair has partly blamed the recent 'collapse' in Britain's air traffic control system for cancelling more than 1,000 flights in September," the Press Association reported, noting the airline has been among those calling for Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign over the repeated failures.
Despite the disruption, Ryanair said it still carried 20.1 million passengers on more than 111,700 flights in September, up 4% year on year.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has arranged to meet Nats chairman Sir Warren East, the former Rolls-Royce chief executive, in the coming weeks to discuss the reliability of the UK's air traffic control infrastructure. Nats has said the two September faults were unrelated to each other.
The disclosure is the latest development in a month of air traffic control trouble that has repeatedly disrupted Bristol Airport, where the Civil Aviation Authority has already launched an official review into the failures and Nats has faced calls to hold its leadership accountable.
There is no indication of a fresh fault today; this is Ryanair reporting the scale of last month's cancellations in its September traffic figures, published this week.
What this means for your journey: if you are flying with Ryanair or another carrier from Bristol Airport, build in extra time and check your flight status directly with your airline before setting off, since air traffic control capacity remains under scrutiny. If you are driving to the airport, see our /parking/ guide for options that let you arrive with margin to spare.