Norwich Airport is shut to all flights on Friday 28 August as air traffic controllers strike for 24 hours. What your airline owes you, and what it does not.
Norwich Airport will be closed to air traffic for the whole of Friday 28 August, and no flights will operate to or from it that day.
The closure is caused by a 24-hour strike by air traffic controllers who belong to the union Prospect. The airport confirmed the closure on 21 August, saying: “Norwich Airport will be closed to air traffic on Friday 28 August and no flights will operate to or from the airport that day.”
Airlines have been told. The airport is asking passengers due to travel on Friday to “check with their airline for the latest information about their flight and the options available to them”.
This is not a partial closure or a delay warning. The airport is shut to aircraft for the day.
Who is affected
Norwich Airport is served by four airlines, and its own flights listing names the routes:
- KLM to Amsterdam, the route most Norwich passengers use to connect onwards
- Ryanair to Alicante, Faro, Majorca and Malta
- TUI to ten holiday destinations including Tenerife, Crete, Rhodes and Paphos
- Loganair to Aberdeen, Jersey and, seasonally, Ibiza
Friday is a changeover day for package holidays, so the closure catches outbound passengers and people due to fly home in the same 24 hours.
What you are owed, and what you are not
This distinction matters, because it decides whether money is coming to you.
The Civil Aviation Authority’s guidance on cancellations sets out two separate things.
You are entitled to a choice. Your airline must let you pick between a full refund for the parts of the ticket you have not used, or an alternative flight. If you are stuck away from home, the airline also owes you care: food and drink, a way to make calls, and a hotel plus transport if you are rebooked onto the next day.
You are almost certainly not entitled to cash compensation. The CAA lists “airport or air traffic control employee strikes” among the extraordinary circumstances that take the fixed compensation payment off the table. The airline is not at fault here, so the £110 to £520 per person payment does not apply.
If your airline cannot arrange care during the disruption, the CAA says you can arrange reasonable care yourself and claim it back. Keep every receipt, and do not spend extravagantly.
Why the controllers are striking
Prospect balloted its air traffic control members at the airport over pay and parental leave. The union’s own account of the result records a turnout of 100 per cent, with every member backing action short of a strike and 78 per cent backing full strike action.
The gap between the two sides is wide:
- Prospect wants a 10 per cent rise to bring pay in line with market comparators
- Norwich Airport has offered 3 per cent for 2026 and 3 per cent for 2027
- On parental leave, the union wants four months at full pay, four at half pay and four at the statutory rate for maternity, plus one month of fully paid paternity leave. It says only statutory arrangements apply at present
David Avery, Prospect’s national secretary, said: “Norwich Airport is only able to operate because of the goodwill of its air traffic control staff. The airport’s continuing refusal to countenance bringing pay and parental leave in line with the market means that that goodwill has evaporated.”
Scott Sapey, a Prospect representative at the airport, said: “Our priority as air traffic controllers is safety. This becomes increasingly difficult to maintain if air traffic control is continually understaffed.”
The airport said it apologised for the disruption and remained “firmly committed to resolving this dispute through constructive dialogue”.
How we got here
The dispute has been escalating through August in three steps.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 7 August | Airport confirms the ballot result and that action short of a strike will begin |
| 17 August | Action short of a strike starts: working strictly to contract, no overtime, no shift swaps |
| 21 August | Airport closes to air traffic between 08:00 and 13:00 |
| 28 August | Full 24-hour strike, airport closed all day |
Prospect set the strike date on 18 August. David Avery said then: “It is extremely disappointing that we have still not received an acceptable offer from Norwich Airport, which has left us with little choice but to push ahead with this industrial action.”
Neither side had announced a settlement, or any further strike dates, when this article was published on the afternoon of 27 August. The action short of a strike that began on 17 August has not been called off, which is what caused the unplanned five-hour closure on 21 August. Flights on other days are running, but they are running without the overtime and shift cover the airport normally relies on.
What it means for you
If you are due to fly on Friday, treat the flight as cancelled and contact your airline today rather than tomorrow. Refund and rebooking queues get longer as the day approaches, and the choice between a refund and a rebooking is yours to make, not the airline’s.
If you are meeting someone off a flight, there is no point driving to the airport on Friday. Nothing is landing.
If you are flying on another day in the next fortnight, check your flight the night before. The work-to-rule is still running, and it was that, rather than a scheduled strike, that shut the airport for five hours on 21 August at short notice.
If your travel plans have shifted onto the roads or the railway instead, our Norwich roadworks and travel page tracks what is closed this week, and our Norwich to London train times page covers the Greater Anglia main line.
Have your say
We read every message. To comment on this story, email the newsdesk and we may publish a selection of responses: hello@norwichtimes.co.uk.