Air traffic control provider comes under fire after second issue in two weeks

Passengers and airlines “deserve better” an aviation industry body has said, as air traffic controllers came under fire after a second issue within two weeks caused flight disruption.

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.

Monday’s air traffic control issue was the second within two weeks (Liam McBurney/PA)

PA Wire

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”.

According to Ryanair, more than 25,000 of its passengers were expected to be disrupted and more than 140 of its flights had been delayed on Monday.

Chief operations officer for Ryanair Neal McMahon said: “Martin Rolfe has presided over repeated system failures, repeated passenger disruption and repeated failures to deliver an effective back-up system.

“Enough is enough.

“Martin Rolfe should resign today.”

Tim Alderslade, chief executive of industry body Airlines UK, said ATC was “critical national infrastructure” which “must be resilient enough to keep people moving”.

“Yet another Nats failure is causing delays and disruption for passengers and airlines alike, and comes just days after its report into the most recent major outage,” he said.

“Passengers and airlines deserve better and the independent CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) report, together with the forthcoming Civil Aviation Bill, must address the underlying weaknesses in the system so that these failures stop happening,” he added.

EasyJet said: “This, once again, calls into question the resilience of Nats’ systems and demonstrates the need for firm actions to prevent these repeated failures.”

Jet2 chief executive Steve Heapy said it was “simply not good enough for this critical national infrastructure to keep letting customers down.”

“Customers work hard to look forward to their holidays and airlines work hard to deliver those holidays,” he said.

“They should not be repeatedly exposed to delays and disruption because the UK’s air traffic control systems cannot be relied upon.

“There have been too many incidents, too many reports and too many promises of lessons being learned.

“What customers and airlines need now is action, accountability and proper resilience, and we need it urgently.”

He added: “Make no mistake, we are counting the cost of this disruption and will be sending another bill to Nats.”

British Airways said it was “disappointing” that some customers may experience disruption after “yet another technical fault with Nats”.

Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe has faced calls to resign (House of Commons/UK Parliament/PA)

PA Archive

The ATC provider said airports south of Manchester had been “broadly unaffected” on Monday, but that flights heading north and departing from Scottish airports had been experiencing some delays.

Airports in Edinburgh, Belfast and Manchester were registering delayed flights, and Luton Airport said domestic flights had been disrupted.

“Passengers should check with their airlines. This is unrelated to the issue two weeks ago. We apologise for the disruption,” Nats said.

The company said Monday’s incident had been caused by a “connectivity issue” at its Prestwick centre in Scotland, which has since been fixed.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said in a post on X that engineers had “fixed the problem and systems are resuming”, but some delays may continue during the reset.

“I know this will be deeply frustrating for passengers after the previous issue,” she said.

During an unrelated visit to Edinburgh Airport, Scottish First Minister John Swinney said the disruption was “very regrettable”.

He told the Press Association: “I’m glad the issues are now resolved and that flights are able to take their normal course, but it demonstrates of all organisations, particularly the air traffic control system, having resilience, being able to withstand issues in the systems, so that people can rely on the services that are being provided,”

A Nats spokesperson said: “The issue in our Prestwick centre is now fixed.

“We are working with airports and airlines to safely lift air traffic regulations as quickly as we can to minimise any further disruption.

“Passengers should still check the status of their flight with their airline. We apologise for the disruption.”

Passengers slept on airport floors after disruption earlier this month (Gareth Fuller/PA)

PA Wire

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

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.