NATS FAIL PASSENGERS YET AGAIN AS 155 FLIGHTS & ALMOST 30,000 RYANAIR PASSENGERS DELAYED UP TO 3 HOURS (7 JUL)

Ryanair, Europe’s No.1 airline, today (7 Jul) called on NATS CEO, Martin Rolfe, to resign after yet another UK ATC system failure caused widespread disruption across UK airspace, delaying 155 Ryanair flights and impacting almost 30,000 Ryanair passengers, with delays of up to 3 hours.

This latest system failure demonstrates that NATS has learned nothing from its disastrous Aug 2023 system collapse. Nearly three years later, UK passengers are still suffering the same repeated failures despite repeated promises, repeated reviews and repeated assurances that the system had been fixed.

The question is no longer whether NATS has a resilience problem. The question is why Martin Rolfe remains in charge after repeated failures.

Airlines and passengers continue to pay even higher ATC charges while receiving a steadily deteriorating service. Every summer NATS promises improvement. Every summer passengers suffer delays. Every summer NATS blames external factors. Yet the failures continue under Rolfe’s mismanagement.

Following the August 2023 NATS system collapse, the independent CAA review identified serious shortcomings in resilience, governance and incident management. Passengers were promised lessons had been learned. Today’s disruption demonstrates that those promises have not been delivered.

Ryanair Chief Operations Officer, Neal McMahon said:

“How many more system failures do passengers have to suffer before Martin Rolfe accepts responsibility and resigns?

Nearly three years after NATS’ catastrophic 2023 system meltdown, UK passengers are once again being delayed because NATS’ systems have failed.

Today’s outage delayed 155 Ryanair flights and disrupted almost 30,000 Ryanair passengers. Families travelling on holiday, people travelling for work and thousands of visitors to the UK have once again paid the price for NATS’ failure.

The most astonishing part is that NATS continues to charge airlines and passengers more every year while delivering a worse service.

Following the 2023 collapse we were told lessons would be learned. We were told resilience would improve. We were told the systems had been fixed. Yet here we are again. This is no longer an isolated incident, it is a pattern of repeated failure with Rolfe in charge.

Martin Rolfe has presided over the 2023 system collapse, repeated staffing shortages, worsening delays and now yet another major system failure. It is time for new leadership at NATS. UK passengers deserve better. Airlines deserve better. NATS’ staff deserve better.

The UK Govt, the CAA and NATS Board must stop accepting excuses and get someone capable in to run this critical piece of UK infrastructure.”