Air traffic control boss says he was ‘most disliked person in the UK’ after flight chaos

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Nats chief says he ‘quite enjoyed’ ignoring calls from Ryanair CEO to quit over system outages in SeptemberBusiness live – latest updatesThe boss of Nats has said he was “the most…

Nats chief says he ‘quite enjoyed’ ignoring calls from Ryanair CEO to quit over system outages in September

The boss of Nats has said he was “the most disliked person in the UK” after air traffic control systems failed twice in September, disrupting flights for hundreds of thousands of passengers.

He told an aviation industry conference: “My name is Martin Rolfe, I’m the CEO of Nats – or as I like to think of myself, the most disliked person in the UK in September.”

Airlines led by Ryanair called for Rolfe’s resignation after two technical failures in a fortnight at the two control centres run by Nats (National Air Traffic Control Services) stopped flights taking off and landing.

However, Rolfe said he was “quite enjoying” ignoring the repeated calls from Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary to quit.

Airlines have said the outage on 8 September alone cost them tens of millions of pounds. The chaos that day stemmed from an issue in Nats’s flight control systems and is now the subject of a government-commissioned inquiry.

Rolfe told the Airlines 2026 conference in London on Wednesday that Nats had expected to handle about 8,000 flights that day and 6,000 had flown, although he did not address the long delays that many of those experienced.

On 21 September, a further glitch at Nats’s second control centre at Prestwick in Scotland led to more than 200 flight cancellations.

Rolfe said the causes for both events were unprecedented but had been fixed, although he could not promise no more outages would occur.

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