Scotsman Bulletin Thursday 31 July

The Scotsman

2 months ago

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00:00Hello and welcome to The Scotsman's video bulletin for this Thursday. My name's Dale

00:13Miller. I'm Deputy Editor at The Scotsman and I'm joined by our transport correspondent Alistair

00:20Dalton. Alistair, before we get to talking about all things transport today and it's another busy

00:27day and week in the sector, I want to talk about the front page of today's Scotsman.

00:33And we led on our splash of Scotts orphan warns staff over closure. This is a body called Sescon

00:42which is based in Livingston but also has a facility in Methyl in Fife. It's involved in the

00:49decommissioning sector and we are reporting on some correspondence that staff have been warned over

00:57closure and an end to trading for the company. Now this is a company that has won and received

01:03public funding as part of its work. A lot of concern about its future and the impact on

01:10on some 20-odd staff but also the implications for the wider oil and gas sector and also

01:18taxpayers money that the company has taken. That exclusive story from our Deputy Political Editor,

01:25David Bowl can be read at scotsman.com. Also a very striking image there as we prepare for

01:32Edinburgh's festivals which effectively officially start tomorrow and get underway in full. We'll have

01:40all the latest coverage including an in-depth interview with Edinburgh International Festival

01:45Director Nicola Benedetti that you'll be able to read on the site this afternoon. Alistair,

01:51there's a story that's in the wing there as well. It relates to an incident and anyone that was

01:56catching a flight through Edinburgh Airport or some of the other airports across the country

02:01would have probably noticed an impact over the past 24 hours. Can you explain exactly what happened

02:07yesterday? Yes, so this was an air traffic control issue which is the responsibility of NATS or National

02:14Air Traffic Services who just after 4pm yesterday announced that they had a radar related issue in

02:23what's called the London control area and that's effectively the southern half of the UK,

02:30the northern half of the UK is controlled from Prestwick in Scotland. So they, for safety,

02:37they said they were reducing the number of flights operating in that area and that went on for about

02:4420 minutes where they switched to a backup system and then tried to get things back to normal and that

02:52prompted airports like Edinburgh to put all departures on hold for a short time which then led to knock on

03:00disruption really across the UK but particularly in the London area. And Alistair, now we're almost not

03:09quite 24 hours on from the first reports of the traffic control issue but we're well advanced. Where are

03:16things at in terms of any disruption at the airports in store? We haven't had details of the delays to

03:23aircraft but as far as cancellations Scottish airports escaped relatively lightly in total across the UK

03:31there are about 150 cancellations but there were only two sorry four in Edinburgh that's um Scotland's by

03:38far by Scott far Scotland's busiest airport um and and one from Glasgow that's not confirmed yet as to

03:46related to this problem so just five in total plus one airline sorry one aircraft coming from France

03:54which is uh to Edinburgh which was diverted. Perhaps things weren't so bad in Scotland as well because

04:01it's we're coming to the end of this the school holidays which is two weeks to go compared to England

04:06where the school holidays are very much in in full swing so relatively fewer people going on a holiday

04:12than than earlier in the summer um however this um was not the first time there's been a big problem

04:21uh technical problem affecting Nats uh in August two years ago uh hundreds of flights um or thousands

04:29of flights across the UK were cancelled in another technical problem and what's described as one of the

04:34worst incidents uh for a decade uh more than 200 flights cancelled in Scotland um and there was a report

04:42into it afterwards which recommended that um Nats should review its contingency and engineering resource

04:50management arrangements uh uh to uh avert or reduce the effect of any further incident um now there's been a

05:01furious reaction from airlines to this latest incident where um Edinburgh's biggest airline Ryanair uh is

05:10saying no lessons have been learned from that previous study and they described it being outrageous that

05:16passengers were being hit by delays and disruption again and I've even gone so far as to say that if

05:23the Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe is not uh doesn't go and the UK transport secretary Heidi Alexander

05:32should actually remove him from his post and we've also had a bit of reaction from um one of the UK

05:40businesses uh ministers uh Gareth Thomas he's he's he's describing uh how uh Mr Rolfe it will be

05:47summoned to see um the transport secretary Heidi Alexander and he's also suggesting that the measures

05:55in the 2023 report of the aftermath were perhaps not enough so we'll see how things develop there

06:01plenty more to come there uh Alistair just quickly while I've got you um you wrote on the ongoing

06:09ferry situation uh in the past 24 hours you can read that story at scotsman.com as well um uh Jamie

06:16Green uh former uh Tory uh MSP now with Dems uh has basically really complained about the impact of

06:24never-ending disruption there are ongoing timetable issues aren't they and they will drag on well into the

06:30water yeah and the particular problem in this apparently never-ending story is uh the service

06:38to Aaron it's the third busiest route on the Calmac network and we've got a situation now where

06:44passengers will be switched between two mainland ports to get to the main place in Aaron Brodick

06:50uh in September for up to now just now uh people have to travel from Troon which is further away from

06:59the central belt from Glasgow it doesn't have a direct rail link uh it's a longer crossing and there's

07:04fewer crossings um but there's work happening in Troon on the link span the the um connection between

07:12the jetty and the ferry that will close that for a week so passengers will have to travel from

07:18Ardrossan instead which many will welcome because it's as it's a shorter crossing more frequent uh

07:25more convenient for if you're a foot passenger traveling by rail and then they'll have to go back

07:31uh back to Troon um after that but this is partly because of a shortage of ferries uh delays to new

07:37ferries being delivered but also an absolutely mammoth uh repair job on the main Aaron ferry from Ardrossan

07:45Caledonian Isles which may not be back in service until November this year which is nearly two years

07:52after it went out of service and then had a series of major repairs so so lots of disruption ahead

08:02for particularly for that island Alistair I'm sure viewers watching this will be scratching their heads at

08:09how the Glen States ferry uh long overdue um will not actually cannot birth at Ardrossan port because

08:16it's too big uh how we reached the situation where that was possible um and it's not helping to to uh

08:24feel or improve um the length of that service you can read uh Alistair Dalton's uh reports uh around both nets

08:32and uh their ferry situation at scotsman.com if you ever can't find any of his coverage there's a

08:38transport tab in the navigation bar to get you there now please follow us on all social media

08:43channels and go out and pick up a copy of the Scotsman in print tomorrow we will be going big

08:48on the festivals as we bring in the first day including that interview with Nicola Benedetti

08:54thanks to you Alistair thanks to everyone else for joining us

Scotsman Bulletin Thursday 31 July

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