The boss of the air traffic control provider Nats has been summoned to meet the UK transport secretary as the number of flight cancellations hit 1,300 in a second day of disruption for hundreds of thousands of passengers. Martin Rolfe, who is facing increasing pressure to resign over a third major stoppage to flights in just over three years, is due to brief Heidi Alexander on Wednesday. Rolfe ruled out a cyber-attack as a cause for the “technical issue” at air traffic control and defended the resiliency of the systems run by Nats, which provides services to 15 UK airports.
This will be something we haven’t seen in more than 50 years of operation. I would say the UK has one of the best reputations in the world both from a safety perspective and resilience perspective.” Nats said the problem occurred in its flight processing system but was not the same fault as those that caused outages and mass disruption in 2023 and 2025. However, Yvonne Moynihan, the managing director of Wizz Air UK, called on Rolfe to consider resigning over the repeated technical failures at Nats.
What we need to see from leadership is accountability. There are serious questions about the resilience of the system. I think Nats and the leadership need to look deep inside themselves.” On Tuesday, Nats said that the fix had been a “very complex recovery and has created difficulties for the whole aviation network, from which it will take time to recover”.
According to FlightRadar, 246 flights had been cancelled at Heathrow by 6am on Wednesday, while Gatwick passengers faced 33 cancellations. In a statement on social media on Wednesday morning, Heathrow said: “Following yesterday’s Nats technical issue, flights are operating today, but some disruption may continue as airlines reposition aircraft and crew. Ryanair has said more than 65,000 passengers had been delayed and 50 flights cancelled, with the knock-on effects affecting flights across Europe.
Europe’s biggest low-cost carrier repeated its demand for Rolfe to resign. The airline’s chief operations officer, Neal McMahon, said: “Families travelling on holiday, people travelling for work and thousands of visitors to the UK have once again paid the price for Nats’ abhorrent failure.” He said the government should “stop making excuses for repeated Nats failures and appoint a new leader capable of running the UK ATC system”. The breakdown started at about 1pm on Tuesday and affected departing flights at many of Britain’s biggest airports, including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted.
London airports, as well as Manchester and Birmingham, were among the most directly affected. Flights to and from other airports around the UK, including Edinburgh and Belfast, were also disrupted. The air traffic control problems follow an “isolated event” a year ago that caused widespread disruption, and appeared less severe than the full grounding of flights in August 2023, which prompted a parliamentary inquiry.
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