EasyJet promises to fly stranded Brits back to the UK on repatriation flights | UK News

EasyJet will run five rescue flights to bring home Brits stranded abroad after the air traffic control fault on Monday.

The airline said its operations are now running normally again following the glitch, which saw hundreds of thousands of passengers booked to travel to or from the UK have flights cancelled.

Its five repatriation flights will go from Palma and Faro on August 30, and Tenerife and Enfidha on August 30, and then Rhodes on September 1.

A spokesperson said: ‘We are also operating larger aircraft on key routes including Faro, Ibiza, Dalaman and Tenerife to provide some additional 700 seats this week.

‘Although this situation was outside of our control, we are sorry for the difficulty this has caused for our customers and remain focused on doing all possible to assist and repatriate them.

‘Customers will be moved onto repatriation flights and notified directly.’

Tens of thousands more airline passengers suffered flight cancellations on Tuesday due to the knock-on impact of an air traffic control (ATC) fault.

Transport Secretary Mark Harper said it was the worst incident of its kind in ‘nearly a decade’ and announced an ‘independent review’ will be carried out.

The issue started on Monday, when more than a quarter of flights at UK airports were cancelled.

ATC provider National Air Traffic Services (Nats) suffered what it described as a ‘technical issue’ preventing it from automatically processing flight plans.

This resulted in flights to and from UK airports being restricted while the plans were checked manually.

Nats said at 3.15pm on Monday the problem was resolved, but disruption continued into Tuesday as many aircraft and crews were out of position.

Analysis of flight data websites shows at least 281 flights – including departures and arrivals – were cancelled on Tuesday at the UK’s six busiest airports.

This consisted of 75 at Gatwick, 74 at Heathrow, 63 at Manchester, 28 at Stansted, 23 at Luton and 18 at Edinburgh.

Many other flights were significantly delayed.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told broadcasters: ‘I know people will be enormously frustrated by the disruption that’s impacting them.

‘Thankfully things like this are rare and the issue itself was fixed in a matter of hours, but the disruption obviously is continuing and will last for a little while longer.

‘The Transport Secretary is in constant dialogue with all the industry participants, he will be talking to airlines specifically later today and making sure that they support passengers to get home as quickly as possible.’

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