Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander demands air traffic meltdown report on her desk within days as embattled NATS boss who took home £2.2m in bonuses is accused of lying over IT crisis that hit 2,000 flights
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has ordered Martin Rolfe, chief executive of National Air Traffic Services (NATS), to hand her a report by next Wednesday explaining the technical failure that led to the cancellation of around 2,000 flights this week. Mr Rolfe faces mounting pressure to resign after the outage disrupted roughly 330,000 passengers, with Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary branding his position "untenable" and accusing him of lying about the cause. The incident has renewed scrutiny of NATS's safety record, given Mr Rolfe received £2.2million in bonuses over three years despite two major air traffic control failures since 2023.
Alexander said she met Rolfe within 24 hours of the incident and has separately asked the Civil Aviation Authority to conduct an independent six-month review, saying it "wouldn't be right for NATS to be marking their own homework". O'Leary claimed NATS initially blamed the outage on a "rogue flight plan" — the same cause identified in a 2023 failure that disrupted 700,000 passengers — but that Rolfe later denied this, insisting the cause was "something different". A separate outage in July 2025 also caused hundreds of flight cancellations. Downing Street has said it retains confidence in Rolfe, and Alexander said she would not rush to judgment ahead of the reports.
- Minister demands NATS report by Wednesday after 2,000 flights axed
- NATS boss Rolfe accused by Ryanair's O'Leary of lying over cause
- Rolfe earned £2.2m in bonuses despite two major past failures
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Air travel across the UK has been thrown into disruption after a technical fault at National Air Traffic Services (NATS), the organisation responsible for guiding planes safely through UK airspace. The failure led to roughly 2,000 flight cancellations and affected around 330,000 passengers. NATS has faced similar problems before, including a major failure in 2023 and another outage in July 2025.
The government minister responsible for transport, Heidi Alexander, oversees aviation policy and can put pressure on organisations like NATS, though NATS itself is run separately with its own board and chief executive, Martin Rolfe. Ryanair, one of Europe's biggest airlines and a frequent critic of NATS after previous disruptions, is run by Michael O'Leary, who has been vocal in this case. The Civil Aviation Authority is the independent regulator that oversees safety and standards in UK aviation.
This matters because reliable air traffic control affects millions of passengers and the wider airline industry, and repeated failures raise questions about accountability, executive pay and whether enough has been done to prevent problems recurring.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Critics such as Michael O'Leary argue that Martin Rolfe's position has become untenable: this is the third major NATS failure since 2023, nearly 330,000 passengers were stranded this week alone, and a chief executive who allegedly gave shifting or misleading explanations for the cause has forfeited the trust needed to lead a safety-critical body. They contend that £2.2million in bonuses paid despite repeated systemic failures reflects a broader accountability gap, and that swift leadership change, alongside external scrutiny from the Civil Aviation Authority, is the only way to restore public and industry confidence in air traffic control.
The case against
Others, including the government's current stance, argue that removing a chief executive on the back of a single incident, before any independent investigation has reported, risks scapegoating rather than fixing underlying problems. They point out that Alexander herself has said she will not rush to judgment, that Rolfe has engaged promptly with ministers, and that a six-month CAA review exists precisely to establish facts fairly rather than through trial by media or competitor pressure. On this view, due process, complex national infrastructure, and the risk of destabilising leadership during an ongoing safety review justify patience over an immediate resignation.