The head of the UK's air traffic control provider is under pressure to step down after a technical fault disrupted flights for the second time in two years. The system operated by Nats was affected for around 20 minutes on Wednesday, leading to hundreds of flight delays across the country.
British Airways was forced to limit arrivals and departures at Heathrow to 32 per hour until 7.15pm, before returning to the usual rate of 45 per hour. Nats said the problem, which occurred at its control centre in Swanwick, Hampshire, restricted the number of aircraft that could fly over England and Wales. The issue was resolved by about 5pm, with engineers restoring the affected system and normal operations resuming.
Ryanair's chief operating officer, Neal McMahon, called for Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign or be dismissed. He said: "It is outrageous that passengers are once again being hit with delays and disruption due to Martin Rolfe's continued mismanagement of Nats. Yet another ATC system failure has resulted in the closure of UK airspace meaning thousands of passengers' travel plans have been disrupted."
McMahon added that no lessons appeared to have been learned since the August 2023 outage, and urged transport secretary Heidi Alexander to remove Rolfe if he did not step down. Alexander said she was aware of the technical issue and had been informed systems were restored, but warned that continued disruption was expected. The Department for Transport noted that Alexander has no direct control over Nats and no powers over staffing decisions.
The latest incident echoes the August 2023 failure, when more than 700,000 passengers faced disruption after a technical glitch grounded flights at UK airports. Nats said Wednesday's problem was not believed to be a hacking incident, and the UK National Cyber Security Centre did not view it as such. Airports advised passengers to check with airlines, with some flights placed in holding patterns or diverted while the issue was resolved.
