Ryanair calls for NATS chief Martin Rolfe to resign after second system collapse in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS

From the Newshound archive · first published 21 September 2026.

Ryanair is calling for NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe to step down immediately, or for Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander to remove him, after the air traffic control body's Prestwick system failed again this morning — less than two weeks after an identical outage on 8 September that threw more than 2,000 flights across the UK and Europe into chaos. Over 25,000 Ryanair passengers are now facing delays of up to three hours, with more than 140 flights affected, and NATS has given no indication of when normal operations will resume. The outage comes just three days after NATS published a preliminary report on the September incident, in which it promised "mitigation plans" to prevent a repeat.

Edinburgh Airport chief Gordon Dewar called the failure 'incredibly disappointing' and warned 'something needs to change.'

Flights to and from Dublin, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Manchester and airports throughout Scotland, Northern England and Ireland are all affected.

NATS' own report acknowledged that a permanent software fix had not yet been put in place — and its 'mitigation plan' has now been shown to be worthless within days of its publication.