A bride-to-be faces a nervous wait to get to her dream wedding in Las Vegas after her flight was cancelled during a second day of major air travel disruption in a month.
At least 100 flights were expected to be delayed in Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England after National Air Traffic Services (Nats) was hit by an air traffic control (ATC) issue on Monday.
The fault led to increased calls by airlines for Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign – but there was also frustration on the ground with thousands of passengers facing delays or cancellations.
Among them is bride-to-be Barbara Ann Stoddart, who was due to fly to Las Vegas with groom Andrew Lithgow, their three children, best man and a friend, for their dream wedding.
The party were booked to fly from Glasgow to Heathrow with British Airways on Monday but that flight was cancelled, meaning they will miss their connection to Las Vegas later the same day. They have now been booked onto a flight late Tuesday afternoon.
Ms Stoddart said: “I’m completely stressed out. This has been planned for about a year-and-a-half, going away to get married, and the flight has now been cancelled, so we’re going to miss a full day as we won’t be there till tomorrow night.
“I have still to go to the county court in Vegas to go and get the marriage licence, and I’ve got to be there three days in advance.
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“The wedding is on Saturday but if there’s any hiccups I might not be getting married on Saturday now. I was going to do it on Tuesday because they said if there’s any hiccups or delays it gives you an extra 24 hours for them to process at their end.
“The wedding chapel and everything is already booked and paid for as well, and it’s on the Saturday, so we can’t rearrange it.”
Also facing added stress to their journey is Dan Halpenny and his family, who needed to get from Dublin to the UK on Monday for his father and children to make a flight to Bali on Tuesday.
Booked on a 10.35am flight to Bradford Leeds Airport, they got told their flight was delayed to 6pm.
The 29-year-old from Preston said: “Early on when it all came about there was anger over the lack of information but since then it has quickly turned to apathy.
“These things happen in big organisations, but the whole thing could have been handled better with passengers given better information on the ground. It is a stressful time, because we want to get to the UK for the flight to Bali, but we’re not super wealthy and can only work within our means.
He added: “We are supposed to feel relatively trustful over using air travel, but these recent incidents have hit that and might mean when booking flights we book a couple of days earlier or even look at different modes of transport.”
Airports in Edinburgh, Belfast and Manchester have all registering delayed flights, and Luton Airport said domestic flights had been disrupted.
“Passengers should check with their airlines. This is unrelated to the issue two weeks ago. We apologise for the disruption,” Nats said.
The company said the issue was unrelated to a software fault at Nats on September 8, which caused more than 2,000 flights to be cancelled, disrupting hundreds of thousands of passengers.
But Ryanair Neal McMahon said: “Martin Rolfe has presided over repeated system failures, repeated passenger disruption and repeated failures to deliver an effective back-up system.
“Enough is enough. Martin Rolfe should resign today.”
A Nats spokesperson said: “The issue in our Prestwick centre is now fixed.
“We are working with airports and airlines to safely lift air traffic regulations as quickly as we can to minimise any further disruption.
“Passengers should still check the status of their flight with their airline. We apologise for the disruption.”
