Flight disruption across UK airports entered a third day, with 51 further cancellations recorded today as air traffic control provider NATS continued to grapple with the fallout from a major technical fault. Heathrow was hit hardest with 28 cancelled flights, while the outage, which began on Tuesday, has now affected an estimated 250,000 passengers and led to mounting pressure for NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign, including a public call from Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary, who branded his position "untenable".

Data from Cirium showed 2,145 flights affected over the past two days, with 399 cancelled or grounded yesterday alone, when Heathrow saw 79 of its 666 scheduled departures disrupted. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander met Rolfe, ruled out a cyber-attack, said the fault stemmed from a technical issue at NATS's Swanwick site, and ordered the Civil Aviation Authority to carry out an independent review, giving NATS a week to report back. Despite the disruption and Rolfe's £1.42 million pay packet last year, Downing Street said the Prime Minister retained confidence in him, though airlines including Wizz Air joined calls for him to go.