Ryanair has filed a legal action against England’s air traffic control operator NATS over a computer meltdown in August last year that caused significant flight disruptions and stranded thousands of passengers.
The lawsuit has been brought in the London High Court, relating to general commercial contracts and arrangements, with NATS confirming the initiation of proceedings and reviewing the claim.
Ryanair has repeatedly called for NATS’s chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign and demanded reimbursement for the costs incurred by airlines and passengers due to the system collapse.
The system failure occurred when a flight planning system crashed, resulting in errors and preventing automated processing of flight plan data, leading to flight cancellations and delays affecting multiple airlines.
This disruption led to Ryanair cancelling 350 flights and disrupting 63,000 passengers, while EasyJet had to cancel over 600 flights and experienced delays affecting over 110,000 customers.
The incident also impacted flights to and from Ireland, with delays in engineers addressing the issue due to the bank holiday, prompting concerns about the communication between NATS and airlines during the crisis.
