Pressure mounts on air traffic control boss after latest disruption

The head of air traffic control provider Nats is facing calls to resign after a second issue within two weeks, as the Prime Minister said Monday’s flight disruption caused “even greater concern”.

Flights were delayed in Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England amid an air traffic control (ATC) issue on Monday, National Air Traffic Services (Nats) said.

The company said the issue was unrelated to a software fault at Nats on September 8, which caused more than 2,000 flights to be cancelled, disrupting hundreds of thousands of passengers.

On Monday, airlines expressed their dismay and anger at “yet another” ATC incident, and Ryanair repeated its calls for Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign.

Speaking to reporters on his flight as he travelled to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Prime Minister Andy Burnham was asked why he did not fire Mr Rolfe.

“Well, these are clearly serious issues and they need to be fully investigated, and I know the Transport Secretary is taking these issues extremely seriously,” he replied.

“Further issues today do cause even greater concern, but initially this is a matter for the Transport Secretary to get to the bottom of what is behind this and why there has been a recurrence.”

Passengers at Belfast International Airport, Co Antrim, following disruption to flights (Liam McBurney/PA)

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EasyJet said the latest flight disruption “calls into question the resilience of Nats’ systems”, and Jet2 said customers and airlines need “action, accountability and proper resilience”.

Nats said Monday’s incident was caused by a “connectivity issue” at its Prestwick centre in Scotland, which has since been fixed with its system now running at “full capacity”.

Flights were also delayed at airports in the US on Monday after construction workers cut a cable required for air traffic control, officials said.

An initial report by Nats into the disruption on September 8 found it was caused by a software defect and not by “any incorrect actions”.

Barbara Ann Stoddart and Andrew Lithgow, who were due to fly to London Heathrow and on to Las Vegas to be married – before their flight to London was cancelled – at Glasgow Airport (Lucinda Cameron/PA)

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The fault happened in “the space of a millisecond”, the report said.

Mr Rolfe previously apologised for the incident earlier this month, for which he said he took “full responsibility”.

Last July a “radar-related issue” caused an air traffic control failure which disrupted thousands of passengers and forced the cancellation of more than 160 flights.

In August 2023, more than 700,000 passengers suffered disruption when flights were grounded at UK airports when Nats experienced a technical glitch while processing a flight plan.

Nats is the UK’s leading provider of air traffic control services and handles about 2.5 million flights per year.