The boss of Ryanair yesterday criticised a report on the flights chaos seen over the recent bank holiday as "rubbish".
Michael O'Leary claimed the findings "downplay the impact on the aviation industry" and said the document was full of excuses.
The UK's air-traffic-control system was brought down in a "one in 15million" event, the head of air traffic services Nats said on Wednesday.
Hundreds of flights were delayed or cancelled as a result of the August 28 incident, which is thought to have cost airlines up to £100million in total.
Industry group Airlines UK argues that carriers incurred huge costs in providing accommodation and putting on more flights for customers who were stuck overseas.
It is now calling for these costs to be covered.
Carry the can
Tim Alderslade, chief executive of Airlines UK, said: "Airlines cannot be the insurer of a last resort. We can't have a situation whereby airlines carry the can every time we see disruption of this magnitude."
Mr O'Leary told the BBC that the disruption will cost his airline between £15million and £20million in refunds for hotels, food and alternative travel arrangements.
He demanded that Nats, which controls the UK's air traffic services, "accepts responsibility for its incompetence".
EasyJet boss Johan Lundgren said that "many questions are still left unanswered" after Nats published the initial report into what exactly caused the system failure.
"An incident on this scale should not have happened and must not happen again," he added, saying that he was looking forward to a more "wide-ranging" review.
In its initial report published on Wednesday, Nats said that, at 8:32am on August 28, its system received details of a flight which was due to cross UK airspace later that day.
UK airspace
Airlines submit every flight path to the national control centre, and these should automatically be shared with Nats controllers, who oversee UK airspace.
The system detected that two markers along the planned route had the same name - even though they were in different places. As a result, it could not understand the UK portion of the flight plan.
This triggered the system to automatically stop working for safety reasons, so that no incorrect information was passed to Nats' air traffic controllers. The back-up system then did the same thing. This unfolded in just 20 seconds.
FTSE 100
The UK's top share index, the FTSE 100, was down 32 points at 7,394 shortly after opening this morning, following yesterday's 11-point fall.
Brent crude futures were down 0.39% at $90.28 a barrel.
Companies reporting today
- Half-year results: Direct Line Insurance Group