Story
Sep 10, 2026
Nats Faces Calls to Go as Britain’s Flight Network Buckles Again
A fresh air-traffic-control failure has cancelled more than 1,300 flights and stranded tens of thousands, exposing a widening divide between Nats’ focus on safe recovery and airlines’ demands for leadership change.
Britain’s aviation system is struggling to recover from another air-traffic-control breakdown, with the immediate disruption giving way to a broader fight over whether Nats can still be trusted to run critical national infrastructure.
The failure began on Tuesday afternoon and initially grounded departures at Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham. Nats said it had identified and fixed a fault in its flight-processing system after almost four hours, but the repair could not quickly unwind the backlog. By Wednesday, more than 1,300 flights had been cancelled, with tens of thousands of passengers facing further delays as aircraft and crews were left out of position. 1
Nats has framed the incident as a contained technical failure followed by a difficult network-wide recovery. Chief executive Martin Rolfe apologised and said, “We absolutely take responsibility for this,” while insisting that such failures are “relatively rare.” 1 The company also said the fault was different from the outages that caused major disruption in 2023 and 2025.
Airlines, however, see repetition rather than isolation. Ryanair called the breakdown an “abhorrent failure” and renewed its demand for Rolfe’s resignation. Wizz Air said a critical infrastructure provider should not “repeatedly bring the aviation system to a standstill,” declaring Nats “simply not fit for purpose in its current form.” 1
The political response sits between those positions. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander apologised to passengers and said she was seeking assurances that “lessons will be learned” and that aviation systems were fit for purpose. 1 On Wednesday, she summoned Rolfe before addressing MPs, as the chaos continued into a second day.
Rolfe accepted responsibility for the operational response but stopped short of offering his resignation, saying his focus was “keeping people safe and delivering the best service we possibly can.” 2 That distinction—accountability for recovery versus accountability for repeated failures—now defines the pressure facing Nats.