Another headache for airlines, after last week’s air traffic control outagepublished at 17:50 British Summer Time
17:50 BST
Simon Browning
Transport correspondent
This is the second Wednesday in a row that crisis management teams at UK airlines have had to jump into action, after last week’s air traffic control outage.
The delays at Birmingham Airport, the seventh busiest in the UK, have come at the busiest time of the year for summer tourism. Airports and airlines are operating at their peak – with some areas at capacity.
That means incidents like today’s light air crash and subsequent runway closure will cause immediate delays and cancellations, because the sector runs on incredibly tight operating margins where there is little room to absorb a sudden shock like this.
It has a domino effect – planes that have been grounded at Birmingham will cause problems going into the evening, because they should already be in the air. Then, on arrival at their destination, those planes take the next set of passengers onwards again, in a complex aviation jigsaw of moving pieces.
If those planes are still on the ground at Birmingham, passengers waiting on those planes overseas will be facing disruption too.
Yet more headaches for those crisis management teams to deal with!