- Ryanair and Wizz Air demanded Martin Rolfe resign after UK flight chaos pushed cancellations above 2,000.
- NATS said a flight data processing fault disrupted operations on September 8 and 9, with recovery still underway.
- Ryanair said about 150,000 passengers were affected, while Heathrow and Gatwick logged hundreds of cancellations.
Ryanair and Wizz Air called for Martin Rolfe to resign or be removed Wednesday after a second day of UK flight chaos pushed cancellations past 2,000. The disruption followed a technical failure at National Air Traffic Services, the UK air traffic control provider.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander summoned Rolfe for a meeting on September 9, 2026, as airlines warned that aircraft and crews remained out of position. The problem continued after the agency said its system had been restored.
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Cancellations passed 1,900 by Wednesday morning and later exceeded 2,000 across the network. Heathrow recorded 246 cancellations by 6am, while Gatwick recorded 33.
The morning count included 291 cancelled flights: 120 departures and 171 arrivals. A separate update put Wednesday’s cancellations at 177, nearly all at Heathrow.
The failure began on September 8, 2026. Flight-tracking data showed 1,300 flights to and from UK airports cancelled that day.
The disruption began with a fault in NATS’ flight data processing system. The agency said the issue had been resolved and that operations had returned to normal, but warned that recovery would take time.
Rolfe said the company had ruled out a cyber-attack, although the precise cause had not been fully identified. NATS described the recovery as difficult for the wider aviation network.
Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s chief executive, said the episode had made the NATS chief’s position untenable. He urged Alexander to act, saying she owns 49% of the organisation.
“Transport Minister Heidi Alexander, who owns 49% of NATS, must today demand that failing Martin Rolfe must quit, or be dismissed.”
O’Leary also said airlines and passengers serving the UK were paying for repeated failures. He called for a new chief who could deliver a resilient system and a working backup system.
Neal McMahon, Ryanair’s chief operating officer, asked how many further failures passengers should endure before the chief executive accepted responsibility and resigned.
McMahon linked the latest outage to the 2023 collapse. He said airlines had been told that lessons would be learned, resilience would improve and the systems had been fixed.
“Yet here we are again.”
The passenger impact varied across airline updates.
| Operator or airport | Disruption figure |
|---|---|
| Ryanair | Around 150,000 passengers affected; more than 200 flights cancelled |
| Ryanair, in a separate update | 65,000 passengers delayed up to 8 hours; more than 50 flights cancelled that day |
| British Airways | 100 flights cancelled or diverted; tens of thousands affected |
| Heathrow | 541 cancellations in the broader count |
| UK airports overall | More than 2,000 cancellations by September 9, 2026 |
Airlines said restoring the control system would not immediately restore schedules. Carriers still had to move planes and crews back to the airports where they were needed.
Wizz Air says the third failure requires accountability
Yvonne Moynihan, managing director of Wizz Air UK, said the latest breakdown was the third failure requiring leadership action.
“In any industry when you've had three failures, you need to consider three strikes and you're out.”
She said a third failure and a third explanation were no longer enough, adding that leadership needed to show accountability.
Wizz Air separately described NATS as a critical national infrastructure provider that should not repeatedly bring aviation to a standstill. The airline said the organisation was not fit for purpose in its current form.
The latest breakdown has been described as the third major stoppage in just over three years. NATS said Wednesday’s problem was not the same fault as the outages and mass disruption recorded in 2023 and 2025.
The outage follows earlier scrutiny of contingency plans
Britain’s aviation regulator examined NATS’ outage planning in 2024 after an earlier flight-plan processing malfunction. The review focused on the agency’s resilience and contingency arrangements.
The history has sharpened the airline criticism. Ryanair said the assurances issued after the 2023 collapse had not produced enough improvement, while the latest event again left passengers facing cancellations and long delays.
Rolfe said he accepted responsibility for the performance of the critical infrastructure under his leadership.
“I am the CEO of a piece of critical infrastructure, so it is my job to take responsibility for that.”
He said his immediate focus was restoring normal operations and assisting airlines, airport customers and passengers. NATS said the recovery had created difficulties across the entire aviation network.
The agency’s technical fix therefore did not end the operational disruption. Airlines and airports continued repositioning aircraft and crew on September 9, 2026, while Alexander prepared to question the chief executive about the failure and the system’s backup arrangements.
