Transport Secretary to meet Nats chair amid calls for air traffic boss to quit

The Transport Secretary will meet the chairman of the National Air Traffic Services (Nats) board in the “coming weeks”, she has said, as the company’s chief executive faces calls to resign.

Nats boss Martin Rolfe has come under pressure to step down after the second air traffic issue within two weeks caused flight disruption on Monday, during which more than 170 flights were cancelled.

The company said this had been caused by a “connectivity issue” at its Prestwick centre in Scotland.

This was unrelated to an air traffic control (ATC) software fault on September 8, Nats said, which caused more than 2,000 flights to be cancelled, disrupting hundreds of thousands of passengers.

Heidi Alexander told the Times newspaper she would meet Sir Warren East, the former chief executive of Rolls-Royce who is chair of the Nats board, in the coming weeks, and that she had had a “full and frank conversation” with Mr Rolfe where she had expressed her “anger at the situation”.

She said: “The scale of the disruption that we experienced yesterday was bad enough and to see the impact at Prestwick yesterday was obviously very concerning to me.

“For people using our airports they would feel it adds injury to insult.

“I do understand airlines feel very angry about the situation that has transpired here and I understand why passengers who have been caught up in this will feel aggrieved.

Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe appearing before the Transport Select Committee in 2023 (PA)

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“I’ve had a full and frank conversation with the chief executive of Nats, Martin Rolfe, and expressed my anger at the situation.

“I will be looking to meet the chair of Nats in the coming weeks.”

On Monday, airlines expressed their mounting dismay and anger at “yet another” air traffic control incident, and Ryanair repeated its calls for Mr Rolfe to resign.

Speaking to reporters that day 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 Heathrow Airport in west London, during disruption earlier this month (PA)

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Nats has apologised for both incidents this month and for the disruption caused to passengers and airlines.

Mr Rolfe was appointed Nats chief executive in May 2015 after working as a managing director.

He has been at the helm of the company during four high-profile incidents, including a meltdown on August bank holiday in 2023 during which more than 700,000 passengers suffered disruption when flights were grounded at UK airports.

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.

An initial report by Nats into the September 8 incident said it was caused by a “software defect” and that the fault had happened “in the space of a millisecond.”

The Government has the largest shareholding in the public-private company at 49%.