The Ministry of Defence has rejected claims that a military aircraft caused the technical failure at National Air Traffic Services (NATS) that led to around 2,000 flight cancellations and disrupted more than 330,000 passengers last Tuesday. Reports had suggested that a UK military flight plan containing "spurious" data triggered a glitch that took hours to fix, but the MoD said it saw "no indication of an error on the part of the military" and declined to comment further while a NATS investigation is under way. The episode has fuelled pressure on NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe, with airline bosses and MPs questioning the organisation's reliability and his position.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has demanded a report on the cause of the fault by this Wednesday and ordered an independent Civil Aviation Authority review within six months, while declining to say whether Rolfe should resign; Ryanair's Michael O'Leary and Wizz Air have both called for him to go. The disruption affected 2,145 flights over two days and follows earlier failures in 2023 (over 700,000 passengers hit) and July 2025 (160-plus cancellations), despite Rolfe receiving £2.2 million in bonuses over three years. The CAA says affected passengers are unlikely to be entitled to compensation, as the outage is likely to be deemed "extraordinary circumstances", and operations at major airports had returned to normal by last Thursday.