Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment her Department has made of the economic cost to the UK economy of the closure of a major UK airport for (a) one hour and (b) one day.

The recovery from the NATS disruption on 8 September is ongoing and it is therefore too soon to estimate the full economic cost to the UK economy. However, I am under no illusion that the economic cost of the recent incident is incredibly significant. Therefore, we need to learn the lessons from what has happened to ensure that we can minimise the chance of disruption of this kind happening again.

Following the disruption, on 9 September NATS agreed to undertake a rapid review, reporting to us by 16 September, setting out the cause of the incident and the actions taken in response. We have also asked the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to undertake an independent review of the incident, which is expected to report within six months.