Third major NATS failure in four years renews scrutiny of UK ATM resilience
Airlines have renewed criticism of UK air traffic control provider NATS following a major technical failure that disrupted flights across the country on 8 September, prompting fresh debate about the resilience of the UK's air traffic management infrastructure.
The outage, which NATS said was linked to its flight-processing system, resulted in widespread delays and cancellations at airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Stansted and Edinburgh. Although NATS implemented a fix and restored normal system operations later in the day, disruption has continued into Wednesday as airlines worked to reposition aircraft, crews and passengers. Industry estimates suggest more than 1,000 flights were cancelled on Tuesday and Wednesday and thousands more disrupted because of the incident.
Following the incident, debate has reignited among airlines about the organisation's ability to prevent repeat failures. The outage follows a major flight-plan processing failure in 2023 and a separate technical issue in 2025, both of which also impacted UK air traffic operations.
Ryanair emerged as NATS' most vocal critic, renewing its call for chief executive Martin Rolfe to step down. The airline said more than 65,000 of its passengers were affected by delays and cancellations, with over 50 services cancelled. COO Neal McMahon argued that commitments made following the 2023 disruption had failed to deliver the improvements the industry had been promised.
"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," McMahon said.
Adding that ATC charges have increased by 28% since 2022 and Chief Executive Martin Rolfe having been paid £1.4m in bonuses, McMahon urged the government to replace him.
“The UK Government, the CAA and the NATS Board must stop making excuses for repeated NATS failures and appoint a new leader capable of running the UK ATC system without repeated failures. It’s time for overpaid failure Martin Rolfe to go,” he bluntly stated.
Wizz Air also joined the criticism. Yvonne Moynihan, Managing Director of Wizz Air UK, suggested NATS leadership should reflect on the recurrence of major system failures, telling the BBC that "three strikes and you're out". Separate reports indicated the airline questioned whether the air traffic control provider remained fit for purpose in its current form.
In a statement, Wizz added: “This is not the first time NATS has failed during a peak summer period, and here we go again. A critical national infrastructure provider should not repeatedly bring the aviation system to a standstill. NATS is simply not fit for purpose in its current form”.
Flight-tracking data indicated that around 1,300 flights to and from UK airports were cancelled on 8 September following the NATS system failure, with a further 177 cancellations recorded by Wednesday morning as airlines struggled to restore normal operation
