Ryanair, the UK’s no.1 airline, today (15 Mar) called on NATS CEO Martin Rolfe to step down or be replaced after the CAA’s report into the NATS system collapse in Aug 2023, showed that NATS had no pre-planning, no back up plan, and no engineers on duty (they were all sitting at home in their pyjamas) during last year’s Aug bank holiday weekend.

NATS CEO Martin Rolfe also misled Parliament claiming just 575 flight delays, when the CAA report confirmed that over 700,000 passengers were affected by Martin Rolfe’s latest “business continuity” failure. If UK Transport Secretary Mark Harper had any backbone, then Martin Rolfe would be sacked and somebody competent appointed to run UK ATC services, and to ensure business continuity instead of Martin Rolfe who delivers business failures despite receiving £1.4m per year.

Ryanair’s CEO Michael O’Leary said:

“Over the last 5 years, UK ATC have delivered repeated staff shortages and system breakdowns. The most serious of which was last year’s 28 Aug UK ATC collapse, which the CAA have now confirmed disrupted the travel plans of over 700,000 passengers. Martin Rolfe and NATS produced a Whitewash Report, which misled Parliament as to the causes and effects of this latest NATS failure. Having delivered repeated ATC failures, Martin Rolfe will now deliver the comedy slot at the Airspace World 2024 Conference next Tues, where he will entertain all attendees with his views on “Crisis Management in ATM: Ensuring Business Continuity”. Sadly no one knows less about business continuity than Martin Rolfe. This could be one of the shortest presentations in conference history given that he specialises in creating crises rather than solving them. We look forward to hearing how Matin Rolfe’s engineers were sitting at home in their pyjamas during last year’s Aug bank holiday, one of the busiest travel weekends of the year, and then when NATS systems collapsed, they couldn’t even log into their own computers.

The only way Martin Rolfe could ensure business continuity for UK ATC, is to step down or be replaced by somebody competent. Martin Rolfe has repeatedly shown that he is not this person, and Transport Minister Mark Harper should replace him before he delivers more damage, more staff shortages, and more service breakdowns at UK ATC this summer.”