Former British Airways chief: Gatwick must improve on air traffic disruption
British Airway’s former chief executive has described recent air traffic incidents at Gatwick Airport as “very poor” and said that the airport must improve staffing levels and performance.
Speaking to reporters at a media briefing, Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Assocation (IATA) named Gatwick, whose control tower is operated by Nats, as among the worst offenders in Europe for air traffic incidents in recent times.
In addition to criticisms levelled at Gatwick, Walsh noted ”significant delays” in both German and French airspace, linking the latter to strikes against Macron’s pension reforms.
His comments come after a month of disruption at the East-Sussex hub, which was forced to cap flights in late September for weeks after nearly a third of staff in its Nats-operated tower were unavailable due to sickness.
A daily cap of 800 flights was extended until the 15th October, disrupting thousands of passengers’ getaway plans.
According to airline sources cited by the Sunday Times earlier this month, Gatwick services have been disrupted for at least 40 days since the start of summer due to air traffic control issues.
Staffing shortages at airports more broadly caused untold disruption last summer. Walsh told reporters there was “little evidence to show that any particular airport or airline is struggling to get the required staffing levels.”
But he said the “one exception to that is air traffic control where we’ve seen particular problems on the US East Coast and in some parts of Europe, where staffing levels have not got back to the level they need to be and it is causing delays.”
Gatwick is the busiest single-runway airport in the world and is the primary hub of the low cost giant Easyjet.
A Nats spokesperson said: “Despite the recent disruption, resilience has improved significantly this year since NATS took over the air traffic control contract at the airport a year ago, when we inherited a staff shortage from the previous supplier.”
“We are training new controllers as quickly as possible and expect them to be able to join the operation in the spring. This is the plan that was agreed with Gatwick when we took over the operational service, and until then we will continue to do all we can to handle the volume of traffic and minimise any disruption that occurs.”
A London Gatwick spokesperson said: “We continue to work closely with NATS, our airlines and partners to maintain performance levels as we build resilience in the airport’s control tower.”
“The decision to appoint NATS was made collaboratively with our airlines and we remain fully confident in their ability to deliver our shared plan to improve resilience over coming months and years.”