Ryanair says air traffic failure is not acceptable

Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary has said Monday's failure of the UK's air traffic system was "not acceptable". He said the airline had still not received an explanation as to what caused the problems and questioned why there was no back-up system in place. In a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, he said Ryanair had to cancel about 250 flights on Monday affecting 40,000 passengers. However, he said services were expected to return to normal by Wednesday. More than a quarter of all UK flights were axed on Monday after a fault with National Air Traffic Services (Nats), which runs air traffic control in the UK. Delays and cancellations have been continuing on Tuesday. The disruption on Monday has led to some planes and air crew being stuck in the wrong location, and has also caused problems with staff rotas. According to aviation data firm Cirium, 790 departing flights were cancelled on Monday, which it said was equivalent to about a quarter of all departures, and 785, or about 27%, of incoming flights. As all airlines flying in and out of the UK were affected, this meant carriers could not switch passengers to planes operated by other companies. O'Leary said Ryanair had been in contact with Nats. "We still haven't had an explanation from them on what exactly caused this failure yesterday and where were their back up systems," he said. "It's not acceptable that UK Nats simply allow computer systems to be taken down and everybody's flights get cancelled and delayed." <br/>