Air control boss hauled in for grilling from transport secretary amid calls for him to resign after airports chaos

Independent

7 days ago

The head of the UK's air traffic control firm has been called in for a meeting with the transport secretary after a fault left tens of thousands of summer holidaymakers facing grounded flights on Wednesday.
Passengers across Europe were stranded during the peak holiday season when planes were cancelled and diverted – with some turning around mid-air to return to their departure cities – because of a 20 minute glitch.
And Heidi Alexander has called an urgent meeting with National Air Traffic Services (NATS) boss Martin Rolfe to discuss his handling of the chaos.
Ms Alexander said the meeting will help her 'understand what happened and how we can prevent reoccurrence'.
It comes after Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Manchester airports were among the airports hit by the outage that left many aircraft and flight crew out of position.
Take-offs for thousands of passengers were cancelled because inbound flights had turned back.
In some cases, travellers were held on planes on the tarmac with no news of when their flight might take off.
The disruption, which began just after 4pm on Wednesday, was down to a 'technical issue' at the control centre of ATC provider Nats in Swanwick, Hampshire, the company said. It is understood NATS systems were down for around 20 minutes, with the company issuing an apology to all those affected by the issue.
Flight analytics experts Cirium said that by 5.30pm, 80 flights to and from the UK had been cancelled.
Government sources suggested Ms Alexander will not ask Mr Rolfe to resign, with one saying officials were concerned, but that disruption was limited and flights had largely returned to normal by the end of the day.
But Ryanair immediately called for Mr Rolfe to resign over the chaos caused by the failure.
Chief commercial officer Neal McMahon said he should quit and that, if he does not, Ms Alexander must remove him from his post.
He said: 'It is outrageous that passengers are once again being hit with delays and disruption due to Martin Rolfe's continued mismanagement of Nats.
'Yet another ATC system failure has resulted in the closure of UK airspace meaning thousands of passengers' travel plans have been disrupted. It is clear that no lessons have been learned since the August 2023 Nats system outage, and passengers continue to suffer as a result of Martin Rolfe's incompetence.'
The airline said Mr Rolfe is 'out of his depth and must step aside to make way for someone who can do the job properly'.
Business minister Gareth Thomas was on Thursday asked whether Mr Rolfe will be "fired" over the incident.
He told Times Radio: "The transport secretary is summoning the chief executive of Nats to help us get to the bottom of what went wrong yesterday.
"Clearly, an incident happened two years ago and measures were taken then.
"It looks like those measures weren't enough but we need to get to the bottom of what exactly happened, and conversations will take place today."
A former industry chief has said that it is "unrealistic" to expect an air traffic management system where there is no technical failure.
Graham Lake, former director-general of air traffic management industry association Canso, told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "If you look at the minutes of outage over a period of years, your availability - system availability - is, frankly, very, very good. So, I think it's unrealistic to expect a system where you have no technical failure."
He added: "The failure yesterday was short and sweet, if you like, the recovery was quick - aircraft were operating again very, very quickly."
And Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey called for an urgent investigation into NATS to ensure the system is fit for purpose.