Travel with Katie Butler: Chaos after air traffic control failure

Air traffic control systems grounded thousands of flights on one of the busiest travel days of the year. Photo: Getty Images

Katie Butler writes: Last week certainly caused enormous disruption and left thousands of people stranded at UK airports waiting for the start of their holiday, as well as those stranded overseas following the end of their holiday.

The glitch to the NATS (National Air Traffic Services) system occurred around 8.30am on Monday, August 28 but actually took controllers around eight hours to fix the problem resulting in a complete shutdown of the system for over four hours.

The shutdown of the system of course resulted in the grounding of aircraft meaning flights were not able to operate.

The knock on effect being far worse than the actual four hour shutdown.

From the point of view of a travel agent – the aftermath was far worse to deal with.

Of course, there were delays and cancellations on Monday which needed our attention, but by Tuesday the backlog of delayed flights and cancellations was much worse.

We managed to contact our customers both due to travel and those in resort and advise of the situation, tracking flights to check they were still going to operate.

Only a handful of our own customers were delayed over 24 hours in resort and thankfully were looked after as they were booked on a package holiday and hotel accommodation was provided.

However, we did experience a number of full cancellations prior to departure, some of whom were already at the airport.

On Tuesday we were extremely busy re-booking those who were desperate to still travel on a summer holiday and who had already booked off annual leave from work.

My flight was cancelled, am I entitled to a refund?

As I have spoken about many times in the past, this is where it becomes dependent on how your flight or holiday was booked, and if you were booked on a package holiday.

If you were booked on a package holiday and your outbound flight was cancelled by the airline – then absolutely you are entitled to a refund of the full holiday cost.

However, if you booked your flights separately to your accommodation and transfers and your flight was cancelled, then you are not on a package holiday.

So, while you will get a refund for the flight cost it will be down to the accommodation supplier as to the terms of their refund procedure and booking conditions.

Unfortunately, many will not offer refunds if you cancel at such short notice.

A package holiday certainly offers much more financial protection against this type of situation.

Despite the bank holiday mayhem, late deals remain popular with bookings for the last week in September and October accounting for 29 per cent of our overall new bookings.

No change in your favourite hotspots though, with Majorca and Turkey maintaining top position.

Fingers crossed for a much smoother week at Total Travel.