Sept. 9, 2026, 11:55 a.m. ET
- The UK government has given the NATS air traffic control provider one week to investigate a major systems failure.
- The outage caused thousands of flight cancellations, stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers.
- This is the second major NATS failure in three years, leading to calls for its CEO to resign.
LONDON — Britain’s NATS air traffic control provider has a week to investigate the systems failure that halted flights and stranded hundreds of thousands of passengers, the government said, as pressure mounts on its chief executive.
Travel disruption continued on Wednesday after flights resumed at major airports following Tuesday’s hours-long outage, which led to 2,000 cancellations and cost airlines millions of pounds.
Transport minister Heidi Alexander summoned NATS CEO Martin Rolfe to explain what went wrong. The outage was the second major NATS failure in three years.
“This disruption is completely unacceptable,” said Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s spokesperson, adding that the government would make sure lessons were learned.
Asked about Rolfe’s future, the spokesperson said: “We have confidence in him, and he’s been tasked with the investigation, which will report in a week’s time.”
Alexander on Wednesday said she had instructed the Civil Aviation Authority to conduct an independent review into the cause of an air traffic control system outage that led to thousands of flight cancellations.
“I am clear that passengers should not have to face this disruption, I have therefore asked the CAA to conduct an independent review to establish cause and ensure that our air traffic control systems can get passengers to where they need to be,” Alexander told parliament.
She added: “I do not believe this issue was unavoidable.”
Travel chaos
The last NATS shutdown in August 2023 caused travel chaos, costing airlines £100 million ($136 million), and a radar-related technical issue in July 2025 also affected major airports, including Britain’s largest, Heathrow.
Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s group CEO, told Reuters the outage was “an absolute rerun” of what happened in 2023, when a rogue flight plan caused the shutdown, reiterating his repeated call for Rolfe to step down.
A spokeswoman for NATS, however, said it was not the same issue as three years ago, and instead affected the flight data system.
“We will conduct a full investigation to establish the root cause and identify any further action required,” she said.
Aviation analytics company Cirium confirmed about 2,000 flights to and from UK airports had been affected by the outage on Tuesday and Wednesday combined, with 30% of scheduled departures grounded on Tuesday and 5% on Wednesday.
Knock-on impacts as aircraft out of place
Ryanair said its losses from Tuesday’s outage were £3 million so far, after it canceled 260 flights affecting 48,000 passengers.
British Airways canceled or diverted 100 flights on Tuesday, affecting tens of thousands, and said on Wednesday that 190 flights had been canceled.
As operations restarted, Britain’s main airports – including London’s major Heathrow and Gatwick hubs – said passengers should check with their airline before heading to the airport.
“We are expecting knock-on impacts as aircraft and crew reposition,” the UK’s busiest hub said in a statement.
NATS, a public-private partnership which is partially owned by airlines including British Airways and easyJet, pension funds and the government, paid its owners dividends of £175 million in 2025.
Ryanair is suing NATS at London’s High Court and seeking over £7 million for the 2023 outage, and has called on NATS to reinvest its profits into performance improvements and hiring more staff.
