The head of UK air traffic control company Nats is facing calls to resign after a second technical disruption in two years delayed hundreds of flights. The glitch occurred on Wednesday, causing the system to go down for about 20 minutes.
British Airways was forced to limit inbound and outbound flights at Heathrow to 32 per hour until 7.15pm, down from the usual 45. Nats engineers restored the system by around 5pm, but delays continued. The National Cyber Security Centre does not view it as a hacking incident.
Ryanair’s chief operating officer, Neal McMahon, called for Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign or be fired, accusing him of incompetence and mismanagement. He said no lessons had been learned since the August 2023 outage that affected more than 700,000 passengers.
If Rolfe does not resign, McMahon urged Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander to remove him and reform Nats. Alexander said she was aware of the issue and that systems had been restored, but advised passengers to check with airports. A Department for Transport spokesperson said they were working with Nats to understand the cause.
