Ryanair the UK’s no1 airline has again called for NATS CEO Martin Rolfe to quit (or be removed by the UK govt) as staff shortages at Gatwick airport (Dec 14) delay passenger by up to 2hrs.

Today’s NATS failure follow on from weekend disruption caused by NATS mismanagement and is just 3 months after Martin Rolfe presided over the NATS system failure on 28 August which caused 2,000 flight cancellations. These repeated failures are unique to the UK and are not repeated in any other European ATC provider. It’s time for overpaid CEO Martin Rolfe to quit or be dismissed

Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary said:

“It is unacceptable that passengers continue to face disruption due to the mismanagement of NATS by Martin Wolfe. Only 3 months ago, their system failure  caused long delays, diversions and cancellations for hundreds of thousands of passengers and now passengers are facing over 2hr delays this morning (Dec 14) due to further NATS staff shortages.

These repeated UK ATC failures are unique to the UK and are not repeated by any other European ATC provider. Our passengers want a competent UK ATC service and Martin Rolfe has repeatedly shown he can’t deliver it. He should go and let someone competent run UK ATC.”