Ryanair is suing air traffic control body Nats over last summer’s flight chaos, when more than 700,000 passengers were hit by cancellations and delays.
The low-cost airline’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said his company was forced to pay around £15m in compensation after the widespread disturbance close to the August bank holiday Monday.
An investigation into the collapse found that it was caused by a National Air Traffic Services (Nats) technical failure while processing a flight plan.
The regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), said the chaos was also fueled by a “lack of planning” and engineers working from home.
Around 300,000 people experienced cancellations, while approximately 95,000 experienced delays of more than three hours and at least another 300,000 were affected by shorter delays.
Airlines lost a total of £100 million in refunds, rebookings, hotel rooms and drinks.
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Mr O’Leary said it was unfair that Ryanair and other carriers were forced to increase costs when they were not to blame.
He told Sky Business Live with Ian King: “When things go wrong in the airline industry, we have to compensate our passengers and we want to recover those costs directly from the Nats.
“We continue to call on the Nats chief executive, Martin Rolf, resign or be fired. We think he has demonstrated that he is incapable of running an efficient ATC. [air traffic control] service.
“We are the same size in the UK and Italy. Last year in the UK, 7,000 Ryanair flights were delayed due to Nats staff shortages or system failures. Only 170 flights in Italy were affected by delays from the Nats.”
O’Leary added: “So it’s a terrible service that the Nats are doing. We pay them over £100 million a year in ATC fees and we have a right to expect better service.
“The August Bank Holiday weekend last year was a complete mess.”
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A Nats spokeswoman told Sky News: “We received a court filing this week confirming that Ryanair is initiating High Court action against the Nats… in connection with the events of August 28 last year.
“Our legal team is reviewing the complaint and will respond as necessary.”
It came as Ryanair released a new forecast on Wednesday, in which it predicted that its British traffic would grow 22% by 2030, rising from the current 53 million passengers per year to 65 million travelers.
O’Leary also renewed warnings that passenger fares could rise 10% this summer and revealed that the airline planned to restart flights to Tel Aviv, Israel, in June, if the security situation permitted.
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