Downing Street said it had confidence in the head of Britain’s air traffic control system, despite several airlines calling for an overhaul of the agency after a software glitch plunged airports into a second day of chaos.
Passengers across the country faced further disruption after a technical glitch in the National Air Traffic Service system led to widespread cancellations and delays of flights from Heathrow and other airports on Tuesday.
Number 10 on Wednesday said that while it was “self-evident” that Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander wanted answers about what went wrong and gave the Nats a week to provide a preliminary report, chief executive Martin Rolfe maintained his support.
Alexander told MPs she had ordered Britain’s aviation regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority, to carry out a six-month “independent review to establish the cause and ensure our air traffic control systems can get passengers where they need to be.”
While the government could rule out a cyber attack, she said, “I don’t believe this problem was inevitable.”
The government intervention comes after Sophie Dekkers, easyJet’s chief commercial officer, told the FT that responsibility for the failure should lie with management at Nats, which is owned by the government and the airline group, and pointed to “systematic failures”.
“Where there are systematic errors, you need to look at the entire manual and ask questions to say what is causing those problems,” she added.
The airline group, which includes British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, also wrote to Alexander, calling on the government to focus on the “root cause and ensure those responsible for the failure are properly held accountable.”
“We are concerned about this repeated pattern of system failure,” said Tim Alderslade, chief executive of Airlines UK.
The bill for the industry “will reach tens of millions of pounds” due to business disruption and compensation for passengers in the form of food and hotels, all of which must be paid by the carriers, he added.
In an unusually strong statement about Nats, British Airways said: “We have long advocated for greater sustainability in aviation. We have heard reassurances before, but have been faced with similar challenges again. Our customers and colleagues are tired of having to deal with these problems time after time. This problem needs to be addressed urgently.”
Earlier on Wednesday, Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary said Rolf’s position as Nats chief executive, which he has held since 2015, was “untenable”.
“We don’t need more ‘investigations,’ we don’t need more ‘reports,'” O’Leary said in a statement. “The time has come for him to be removed and it is time for someone competent to be appointed to govern Britain. [air traffic control]”
This week’s incident comes just over a year after a radar problem at Nats National Airport caused hundreds of flights to be cancelled, and a glitch in another part of the organisation’s software in 2023 caused chaos at Gatwick in the height of summer.
Rolfe, whom Alexander summoned to the meeting, said Wednesday that Nats had ruled out a cyberattack and that there would be a “very, very thorough investigation.”
Asked on Tuesday whether he would resign, Rolfe told the BBC he was focused on righting the wrong and that there would be “a lot of time later, but not now.”
On Wednesday, the two airlines said Nats had informed them that the problem that caused this week’s outage was the same one that led to the 2023 crash, directly contradicting Rolfe’s claim that the problem had not recurred.
Ryanair said the problem was “the exact same flight plan processing failure that caused the system to crash in August 2023.”
Another airline told the FT it had been informed by Nats operators that the fault was related to a flight plan error that caused the outage three years ago.
When asked, Nats said it was “not the same problem.” In a separate statement, the Nats said its operations were “stable” and that “a full investigation will be conducted to determine what happened and determine any further actions necessary.”
Tens of thousands of passengers were stranded on Tuesday after the glitch grounded flights and forced incoming planes to be diverted.
Airlines are racing to restore their schedules, but many hundreds of flights were canceled Wednesday.
British Airways said it was forced to cancel nearly 550 flights on Wednesday, saying “the scale and complexity of dealing with the impact of such an event is significant and complex.”
While Ryanair has repeatedly called for Rolfe to resign in recent years, easyJet, which owns a stake in Nats, has not previously called for his departure.
Dekkers added: “This is the third time in three years that we have had a major setback at the Nats and right now we need to focus on understanding the cause of the problem and putting in place mitigation measures, and obviously that will inevitably raise questions about management and the Nats.”
Yvonne Moynihan, head of Wizz Air’s UK unit, said “what we need to see in leadership is accountability” and that the string of failures at Nats raised “serious questions about the sustainability of the system”.
Heathrow, Britain’s largest airport, said on Wednesday its operations were “recovering” but passengers should be prepared for delays as airlines reschedule flights.
“Flights are operating today, but we are expecting side effects as aircraft and crew members change positions,” the airport said.
Gatwick, Britain’s second-busiest airport, said flights had resumed but warned it would “take time for our operations to fully return to normal.”
Additional reporting by David Sheppard in London