Burnham refuses to back NATS boss Martin Rolfe as Ryanair demands he quits over SECOND meltdown in a fortnight
From the Newshound archive · first published 22 September 2026.
Scottish Control sectors flagged with ATC equipment failure warnings across UK and Irish airspace, as a Flight Data Processing System fault at Prestwick restricted Scottish airspace by 60%, delaying hundreds of flights.Martin Rolfe, NATS chief executive, who already faced calls to resign after the September 8 outage, now confronts fresh pressure following a second IT failure cutting Scottish airspace by 60%.
Ryanair chief Neal McMahon called on Martin Rolfe to resign immediately after a connectivity failure at NATS's Prestwick site grounded hundreds of flights and left more than 25,000 Ryanair passengers stranded — the second major air traffic collapse in 13 days. Rolfe, 54, who earns £1.4 million a year, has now presided over four system failures since becoming NATS chief executive in 2015, including the September 8 chaos that cancelled 2,000 flights.
Burnham, asked directly why Rolfe had not been fired, refused to answer and passed the matter to Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander.
EasyJet said the latest failure 'calls into question the resilience of NATS's systems'; Jet2 demanded 'action, accountability and proper resilience'.
NATS insisted the Prestwick connectivity fault was 'unrelated' to the September 8 outage — a claim that has deepened rather than eased airline fury.
