Proactive Investors - News that airline passengers will be hit with higher costs following the Civil Aviation Authority’s decision to allow the UK's air traffic controller to hike fees has been met with fury.
Given a fault in the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) system caused a week of travel chaos in August, the regulator’s decision has faced scrutiny.
Airlines will see air traffic control fees increase from an average of £47 per flight to £64 from next year until 2027 under the CAA’s new pricing decision.
Airlines UK boss Tim Alderslade argued that the move was “yet another kick in the teeth for passengers”, following sweeping cancellations in August caused by a NATS issue.
Passengers will "inevitably end up footing the bill of millions of pounds for increases”, he said.
Some 2,000 flights were cancelled as a result of the issue - which is said to have shut down the NATS system, leaving controllers manually inputting flight data for several hours over the August bank holiday weekend.
This saw hundreds of thousands of passengers affected, with many left waiting for hours or even days for flights to eventually depart.
Though NATS is under investigation over the issue, Alderslade suggested the CAA should face scrutiny too.
"It is clear that a wider independent review into how NATS is regulated is needed to protect passengers and ensure that airlines are not always forced to act as the insurer of last resort and bear millions of pounds of costs for failures that are not their fault,” he added.
His comments come after heated scrutiny of NATS by airlines in the wake of the fault, with Airlines UK representing carriers such as easyJet (LON:EZJ) PLC, Ryanair (LON:0RYA) Holdings PLC (LSE:RYA) and British Airways (LON:ICAG).
The CAA said that NATS had been granted powers to charge more in part to recover losses from the pandemic, alongside financing new investment.
Further steps following August’s travel chaos will be considered following the CAA’s independent review, the regulator added.