It's about time that MOL learned what business is about. He should be provided with the service (or not) he is willing to pay for.

Don't want to pay up for enhancing airspace control? Well, let's start selling AIRSPACE slots to the highest bidder...... Guess who will start crying again.....

320driver has a point:
most airlines - including Ryanair have been growing dramatically over the past 8 -10 years.
Now, as the system is working on the edge, the fastest growing start crying.

It is an interesting topic. NATS do have an obligation to provide a service. However, its a bit like railtrack's decision to close the West Coast mainline every weekend between now an Christmas near Milton Keynes - will Virgin trains get compensation? -I doubt it. All part of the UKs crumbling transport infrastructure.

Perhaps next time the French, Italians, or Spanish go on strike we can claim compensation too?

Whilst NATS is semi-privatised, it is still the Government who control UK airspace through ICAO standards. MOL certainly shouldn't, and won't get any compensation, but I can see where he's coming from in a way. I really hope Swanwick and NATS gets sorted out for everyone's sake. We have the best air traffic controllers in the world, just give them the tools to do their job.

Ryanair have been quite rightly slagged off here for their tacky behaviour -like charging for an interview...but they are right to be hammering the government on this. The airlines pay top dollar for air traffic services. If they are not provided, the government should cough up.

........why bother? Ryanair will hardly compensate their passengers for the cancelled flights.

Just to point out, yes NATS caused delays during the morning, but the recovery was hindered when the CFMU slot allocator also failed in the early afternoon. Surely if someone wants compensation, they should go after it from Brussels too. The second failure probably cost more money anyhow, aiding the CLN overload of around 20 Standsted inbounds within 10 mins, resulting in lots of holding therefore fuelburn. As stated, pax won't see anything for cancelled flights, and at least an aircraft on stand aint got its engines on full tilt.

Should Ryanair succeed, surely this could open the floodgates for sueing more widespread, ie. Burger King for burning down part of Heathrow Terminal 'whichever', or Virgin for closing 27R for a few days after the gear failure.........the list goes on....

A bunch of British airlines were bullied into buying half of NATS in a half-****d government sell-off, with a threat that it would go elsewhere and out of aviation-sector control if not. I didn't see any contribution from Ryanair in this investment. The whole company is no doing well, so is costing BA, bmi etc money. Why should Ryan whinge?

How about Ryanair supplying NATS with a list of the names and addresses of all the passengers affected so they can be refunded directly, missing out the middleman MOL, of course Ryanair will pass on a small sum for the fuel and landing charges they saved as well.....:D

How about all the other airlines suing Ryanair for the delays they cause by failing to cancel their flight plans and clogging up the system with 'slotted' departures that another company could be allocated.