Air Traffic Control Disruption

Bradley Thomas Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Keir Mather]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity to thank the NATS staff at Prestwick, and across the United Kingdom, for the incredible work that they do. NATS will come under a lot of scrutiny in coming days and weeks—rightly so, because we expect it to maintain a system of air traffic control that keeps the British public safe—but I am resolute in my belief that all the staff at NATS responded with all the haste and diligence that we would expect to protect passengers, and to ensure that aviation could restart safely. Ultimately, that is what we expect of NATS.

[Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

This is clearly a very unfortunate incident, and full transparency is essential. Does the Minister have a view on what the overall cost of the incident was to the UK economy? If the Government do not have that figure at the moment, will he update the House on that separately? What plans do the Government have, working with industry, to compensate affected passengers? There will have been all manner of costs borne by those who were unable to fly, and I am sure that collectively, they run into millions of pounds.

[Keir Mather]

While I am not currently in a position to give the hon. Gentleman a pounds-and-pence figure for the economic impact, I am under no illusions about this; it will be incredibly significant. We need to learn the lessons from what has happened to minimise the chance of disruption of this kind ever happening again. He asks me a broader question about compensation or refunds for passengers. Passengers whose flights have been cancelled are entitled to assistance from their airlines, including either a refund within seven days or a rerouting to their destination, including through another airline, where appropriate. Passengers may also be entitled to care and assistance while waiting for a delayed or rerouted flight, but we saw lots of incidents of airport capacity not being able to deal with the number of passengers who were disrupted. That is a key lesson that we have to learn from this incident.