Ryanair calls for NATS boss to resign after UK flight chaos

A technical fault at UK air traffic control provider NATS grounded more than 1,300 flights on Tuesday, with knock-on delays continuing Wednesday. Ryanair and Wizz Air executives are demanding CEO Martin Rolfe resign, calling the failure the third major outage in three years.

Bottom line — Ryanair says the outage will cost it millions of euros and disrupted over 200,000 passengers.

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• The fault hit NATS's flight processing system on Tuesday, per the Daily Sabah, cancelling over 1,300 flights and stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers.
• Ryanair COO Neal McMahon told the BBC: 'Enough is enough ... it's time for him to go', adding that the airline cancelled 250 flights and saw costs 'run into the millions', per the Express.
• Wizz Air UK managing director Yvonne Moynihan told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that over 10,000 of its passengers faced 'serious disruption' and that 'three strikes and you're out' — citing three NATS failures in three years.
• NATS CEO Martin Rolfe apologised but told the Today Programme: 'The UK has one of the best reputations in the world for its air traffic control service,' and ruled out a cyber attack as the cause, per the Mirror.
• Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander summoned Rolfe for a meeting Wednesday to demand assurances that 'lessons will be learned' and systems are 'up to the job', per the Daily Sabah.
• Ryanair said the UK's airspace consistently underperforms compared to other countries, while Rolfe denied this, saying the service is well-regarded for safety and resilience, per the Daily Sabah.
• By 6am Wednesday, Heathrow had cancelled 246 flights and Gatwick 33, per Flightradar24 data cited by Albeu.com, with disruptions expected to last into the day.

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