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The transport secretary has summoned the head of the UK air traffic control service, Nats, to account for the technical failure that led to hundreds of flights being cancelled or delayed on Wednesday.
Heidi Alexander said she would meet Martin Rolfe, the under-fire chief executive of Nats, to “understand what happened and how we can prevent reoccurrence” after more than 150 flights were cancelled and others delayed by the latest Nats glitch.
It is understood that Alexander will not press Rolfe to consider his position, despite fresh calls from Ryanair for him to quit.
Most of the disruption from the brief stoppage came at Heathrow. A total of 84 departures and 71 arrivals were cancelled by 10pm on Wednesday evening, and some inbound flights were diverted to European cities.
A small number of British Airways flights were cancelled on Thursday owing to aircraft and flight crew being out of position, contributing to at least 16 flight cancellations to and from Heathrow. Heathrow and Gatwick airports said they had resumed normal operations.
The stoppage was the second due to a technical fault at Nats’ Swanwick control centre in two years, although the duration was far shorter and the disruption far smaller than the 2023 August bank holiday fiasco.
In a post on X on Thursday morning, Alexander said: “Nats are working closely with airlines and airports to clear the backlog safely and look after passengers. I will be meeting the Nats chief executive today to understand what happened and how we can prevent reoccurrence.”
The “technical issue” at Swanwick may have been due to radar systems, according to some reports, but Nats has not confirmed the cause of the problems, which were announced at about 4pm on Wednesday.
The stoppage is believed to have lasted about 20 minutes, and within an hour Nats said systems were fully operational and that departures had resumed at all airports.
Ryanair called on Rolfe to resign in the wake of the fault, claiming “no lessons have been learned” since the August 2023 system outage. The airline had already called for his head twice in July, in a long campaign waged against Nats and air traffic control services more widely.
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The business minister Gareth Thomas, asked on Thursday whether Rolfe would be fired over the incident, told Times Radio: “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.”
Graham Lake, a former director general of the air traffic management industry association Canso, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think it’s unrealistic to expect a system where you have no technical failure. The failure yesterday was short and sweet, the recovery was quick – aircraft were operating again very, very quickly.”
