UK summons air traffic boss after major outage

IN THE AIR: Ryanair said it canceled more than 200 flights, affecting about 150,000 passengers, while British Airways said it canceled or diverted 100

Flights from British airports resumed yesterday after a major air traffic failure, but questions mounted about the reliability of the UK’s aviation systems and ministers called in the flight control boss to explain the shutdown.

The hours-long outage on Tuesday, which resulted in the cancelation of more than 1,000 flights and left hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded, has ramped up pressure on air traffic control provider National Air Traffic Services (NATS) and its CEO, Martin Rolfe.

British Secretary for Transport Heidi Alexander summoned Rolfe to explain what happened, amid concerns that the infrastructure and technology are not up to scratch.

People wait in line at Heathrow Airport in London on Tuesday during an air traffic control problem that disrupted travel across the UK.

Photo: AP

The shutdown comes three years after the last system meltdown in August 2023, when canceled flights on one of the busiest travel days of the year cost airlines ￡100 million (US$135.54 million).

A radar-related technical issue also disrupted flights in July last year, affecting major airports including Britain’s largest, Heathrow Airport.

“I am seeking assurances that lessons will be learned and systems that support aviation are up to the job,” Alexander wrote on X.

Ryanair, Europe’s biggest airline, has been calling for Rolfe to resign since 2023, while Wizz Air’s British managing director also said he should consider his position.

Ryanair said Britain’s airspace underperformed other countries.

“We’ve had minor issues in other places, but nothing at the scale that we see, and consistently see, in the UK,” Ryanair chief operating officer Neal McMahon told the BBC.

Rolfe, who apologized to those affected by the issue, denied that the UK was worse than other countries and said the country’s air traffic service was well regarded from a safety and resilience perspective.

“We have, at this point, ruled out cyber[attacks],” Rolfe told the BBC when asked about the cause, adding he believed it would be different to previous outages.

As operations restarted, Heathrow said passengers should check with their airline before heading to the airport as schedules would have changed due to the problems on Tuesday.

“We are expecting knock-on impacts as aircraft and crew reposition,” the UK’s busiest hub said in a statement. “We ... are working closely with our local NATS team and airline partners to recover normal operations as quickly as possible.”

London Gatwick, the UK’s second-busiest airport, and the city’s Luton and Stansted also said they were operating, but told passengers to check with their airline first.

Ryanair said that about 150,000 of its passengers had been affected on Tuesday and it canceled more than 200 flights, while British Airways said it had canceled or diverted 100 flights with tens of thousands impacted.