Ministers rejected NATS reimbursement plan before 2,000 UK flights were cancelled
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The UK government opposed a proposal to make air traffic control provider NATS reimburse airlines for passenger compensation arising from its failures, weeks before a massive tech glitch led to 2,000 flight cancellations.
During a House of Commons debate, Liberal Democrat MP Luke Taylor pointed out that the government had opposed the amendment in the months before this week's computer outage, which disrupted travel for around 330,000 passengers.
The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) told affected passengers: "We consider that disruption caused by the NATS outage is likely to be considered the result of 'extraordinary circumstances' under passenger rights rules.
"This means that although passengers should be looked after by airlines, they are unlikely to be entitled to compensation for delays or cancellations that were directly caused by the incident."
NATS is a public-private partnership in which the government...
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