Air traffic boss takes ‘full responsibility’ after thousands face flight chaos

Martin Rolfe, chief executive officer of Nats, said ‘I always accept full responsibility’ after a technical issued caused chaos at UK airports.

The boss of an air traffic control provider said he “always” accepts “full responsibility” after a technical issue caused huge disruption to flights.

Nats, which provides air traffic control services to 15 UK airports, said in a statement that recovery had “taken longer than we had hoped”, but that its “system issue” on Tuesday had been resolved by 7.30pm as thousands of passengers continued to face cancellations and delays.

Asked on Sky News whether he accepted responsibility for the incident which caused chaos for many passengers, with flight monitoring website Flightradar24 saying more than 1,000 flights had been cancelled at UK airports by about 8pm, Nats’ chief executive officer Martin Rolfe said “I always accept full responsibility”.

He said: “I am the CEO of a piece of critical infrastructure, so it is my job to take responsibility for that.

“What I absolutely take responsibility for is keeping people safe and delivering the best service we possibly can on a day like today.

“You will understand my focus is entirely about how we actually resolve this issue, get things back to normal, help our airlines, our airport customers and the travelling public.”

Mr Rolfe has been under fire from Wizz Air and Ryanair after the latest issue which saw some passengers trapped on planes on runways for hours.

Ryanair said more than 65,000 of its passengers had been disrupted and it had cancelled more than 50 scheduled flights.

British Airways (BA) said it was forced to cancel or divert more than 100 flights on Tuesday which had impacted “tens of thousands of customers”.

Neal McMahon, Ryanair’s chief operating officer, called on Mr Rolfe to resign, saying: “How many more failures do passengers have to suffer before overpaid failure Nats CEO Martin Rolfe accepts responsibility for his repeated mismanagement and resigns?

“Over three years after Nats’ catastrophic 2023 system meltdown, it’s clear that nothing has changed, with UK passengers once again suffering avoidable ATC (air traffic control) delays of up to eight hours today due a critical Nats ATC system failing.”

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander is set to speak with Mr Rolfe on Wednesday before she addresses MPs in the Commons for the second reading of the Civil Aviation Bill.

Mr Rolfe said airlines would be able to provide the best information on how long the ongoing impact would take to resolve.

“From a Nats perspective, our system is now back up and running, so we have resolved the issue and now controllers are there to help make sure that we can recover as fast as possible,” he said.

“The challenge, of course, is this is a little bit like an accident on the M25 in rush hour. You clear the accident, but then you have a long tailback which needs to be resolved, aircraft in the wrong place, and so on.

“The best information in terms of how long will take to resolve lies with the airlines.”

Travel journalist Simon Calder said the knock-on effects on Wednesday are “going to be horrible”.

He told Sky News: “There are going to be dozens of cancellations in the morning of flights coming into Heathrow because, basically, the flights didn’t go out tonight.”

Heathrow suspended arrivals from 8pm for the rest of the day on Tuesday “to ensure the safety of our passengers and colleagues”.

“Departures have resumed, but disruption is expected to continue, so we advise passengers to check with their airline for the latest flight information before travelling to the airport,” the airport said in a statement on X.

“We apologise to those affected and are supporting our local Nats team and airline partners as they work through the resulting disruption. “