National Air Traffic Services: Operational Failure

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the case for making National Air Traffic Services liable to pay compensation to customers for operational failure.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government deeply regret the recent NATS operational failure and its impact on airlines and their customers. The incident is being investigated and lessons will be learned. NATS has an outstanding aviation safety record and is regulated against service targets set by the Civil Aviation Authority. There are incentives for NATS linked to its performance; failure to reach target levels may incur penalties and reduce the charges paid by airlines.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, last week 2,000 flights were cancelled because of NATS’s inability to process flight plans, and a quarter of a million passengers were grounded. When airlines are responsible for delays, they must pay compensation to the passenger and pay for alternative flights, accommodation and food. When NATS is responsible for delays, no compensation is payable at all—and, worse, the airlines have to pick up the bill for alternative flights, food and accommodation, which, in this case, was £100 million. Both NATS and the airlines are commercial companies—NATS had a profit of £150 million last year—so is not the differential compensation between NATS, on the one hand, and airlines, on the other, wholly indefensible?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for highlighting this issue, but I am afraid that I do not accept the premise that the two are comparable. There are elements in NATS’s current licence that allow financial penalties to be placed on it in the instances of poor performance. Indeed, as I stated in my first Answer, there is also a mechanism to reduce charges in subsequent years to the airlines because of poor performance. However, I would say that the event that happened was, thankfully, very rare; nothing similar had been seen for over 10 years. Therefore, we are very grateful for the work that the airlines did, and we worked closely with them to repatriate people as necessary.