The head of the UK’s air traffic control company is facing calls to resign after the second disruption to flights in two years due to technical problems.
Hundreds of flights were delayed after the air traffic control (ATC) system went down for about 20 minutes on Wednesday.
Nats, the company that runs the system, blamed a technical problem and said it had now been resolved. The problems raised fears of a repeat of chaos at airports in August 2023 when hundreds of thousands of passengers’ flights were delayed or cancelled.
British Airways said it was forced to restrict the number of its inbound and outbound flights at Heathrow to 32 an hour until 7.15pm. It said the flow rate would then return to the usual level of 45 an hour.
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Ryanair called for the Nats chief executive, Martin Rolfe, to resign or be fired. The airline’s chief operating officer, Neal McMahon, said: “It is outrageous that passengers are once again being hit with delays and disruption due to Martin Rolfe’s continued mismanagement of Nats.
“Yet another ATC system failure has resulted in the closure of UK airspace meaning thousands of passengers’ travel plans have been disrupted. It is clear that no lessons have been learned since the August 2023 Nats system outage, and passengers continue to suffer as a result of Martin Rolfe’s incompetence.”
He said if Rolfe failed to resign then the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, “must act without delay to remove Martin Rolfe and deliver urgent reform of Nats’ shambolic ATC service, so that airlines and passengers are no longer forced to endure these preventable delays caused by persistent Nats failures”.
At about 5pm Nats said its engineers had “restored the system that was affected” and it was “in the process of resuming normal operations”.
The technical issue affected flights across the UK as the number of aircraft that could fly in England and Wales was restricted, the company said.
The problem left many aircraft and flight crew out of position. Airports advised passengers to check with airlines for updates. Liverpool’s John Lennon airport said that Wednesday’s remaining flights could face delays.
Several flights scheduled to arrive at UK airports were required to fly in holding patterns or divert elsewhere. Nats said the technical issue was at its control centre in Swanwick, Hampshire.
Alexander said: “I am aware of a technical issue which impacted Nats’ operations causing travel disruption this afternoon. I have been informed systems have now been restored but continued disruption is expected, and passengers should check with individual airports for advice.”
More than 700,000 passengers suffered disruption when flights were grounded at UK airports on 28 August 2023 after Nats experienced a technical glitch while processing a flight plan.
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A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “While passengers should continue to check with individual airports for advice, Nats have confirmed their systems are now fully operational and flights are returning to normal.
“We are working closely with Nats to understand the cause of the technical issue and the implications for the resilience systems in place.”
The department noted Alexander does not have any direct control over Nats and has no powers on staffing decisions.
