Stewart Wingate, CEO of Gatwick Airport has stated that he has been working with Martin Rolfe, the CEO of the UK’s ATC system in order to deliver a better service.

Wingate was answering a question from Aviation Business News on Tuesday September 9 after some disruption the previous weekend.

“If you look at NATS and the tower operation, not withstanding the disruption on Sunday, their performance in 2024 has dramatically improved over where they were in the previous two years,” he said.

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“We put a contract with NATS in place in 2021 to operate our tower. There was a run-in period before they took over the operation of the tower in October 2022 and candidly, we didn’t expect any disruption from that point forward. If you look at the demand that we (Gatwick Airport) put on them, airlines put on them and most importantly, passengers put on them, is that we just expect 100% delivery of service”.

“So far this year, they delivered 99.6% of the time. so it is a very small amount of time that they have to bridge but nevertheless when we have these disruptions it disrupts passengers”.

“In answer to the question, I’ve personally been holding meetings with their CEO and the operational team on a bi-weekly basis for over 18 months now. I can assure you that step-by-step, they are getting stronger and that they have a bigger contingent of air traffic controllers. It’ll improve further as we go through September and October time.

The CEO said that he ‘remained confident’ that NATS will overall deliver ‘very good’ levels of service; “But  I will not rest until they offer seamless service to ourselves, our airlines and our passengers,” he concluded.