Hundreds of Flights cancelled in the United Kingdom by Bob Cummins

     On Saturday, a faulty switch at the National Air Traffic Service in Swanwick, England caused hundreds of flight cancellations, the most cancellations occurring in Heathrow, one of the busiest airports in the world, where 228 flights were cancelled, leaving many customers very dissatisfied.  There were so many rebookings, that some customers waited around five hours to speak to airline representatives.  Many let off steam on Twitter.  Helena Lucas, a British Paralympic sailor, said, "Customer service is crowded with unhappy people!"  Irish airline, Ryanair, said, "While we acknowledge problems can occur, where is the contingency?  It's simply not good enough and the CAA need to act now."  After 11 hours of delays and cancellations, the NATS announced that the problem was fixed and that "operations are returning to normal," according to one of their spokesmen.  By the end of the dilemma, Eurocontrol said that somewhere around 1,300 flights were "severely delayed".

     If I was one of these people who had their flights cancelled, I would be furious.  The funny thing is that this entire thing was caused by one faulty switch.  This means that their equipment should probably be checked more often.  I don't think that these airlines will lose that much business, because it wasn't their fault.  It was the fault of the NATS, at which some changes in staff might be coming soon... maybe in the control panel area of things...  This article is important for people who want to know that even the biggest companies and/or authorities can screw things up big time.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/flights-cancelled-glitch-uk-air-traffic-control-105216371.html