Nats: Hamble MP Paul Holmes calls for action after air traffic disruption
Thousands of air passengers were left stranded this week following Nats’ latest computer failing
A Hampshire MP has demanded action after the latest air traffic control failure caused chaos for travellers.
Speaking in the House of Commons on Thursday, Hamble Valley MP Paul Holmes called for full transparency over the investigation into the recent air traffic outage that left hundreds of thousands of passengers facing delays and cancellations.
The Conservative MP questioned whether the Civil Aviation Authority’s (CAA) review into NATS should take six months to complete.
Mr Holmes said: “I must just ask the Minister to have a look seriously at that six-month timescale for the CAA review and just ask him to commit to full transparency to make sure that those lessons learnt are not only held within the Department for Transport but also to this wider Parliament.”
He also urged ministers and NATS management to examine long-term investment plans following what he described as the third such incident in as many years.
Mr Holmes said investment was needed to ensure similar failures do not happen again.
He added that the management at NATS, which is based in Whiteley and Swanwick, could not blame a lack of funding for problems with its systems.
Responding to Mr Holmes, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport Keir Mather defended the proposed six-month review timetable.
But he agreed that Parliament should play a role in considering the review’s findings and said the lessons learned could help shape the Civil Aviation Bill currently progressing through Parliament.
During his contribution, Mr Holmes also thanked employees at NATS and praised RAF personnel based on the site.
Speaking afterwards, Mr Holmes told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “Following recent air traffic disruptions, it was important that the government made a statement about it.
“I urged the government to continue to monitor and push for action to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
NATS said operations had returned to normal, although some passengers were still experiencing disruption, and apologised for the inconvenience caused.
The organisation said a full investigation into the technical issue was underway and that it would report its findings to the Transport Secretary and the CAA next week.
Addressing concerns about investment, NATS said it had invested £3.3 billion in infrastructure and technology since becoming a public-private partnership in 2001 and insisted the systems operating from its Swanwick centre had “evolved considerably” in recent years.
It said the latest outage was not a repeat of the major disruption seen in August 2023, and the recommendations from the review into the previous incident had been implemented.