Transport Secretary declares air traffic control failure avoidable

The Transport Secretary has stated that the recent technical failure of the United Kingdom’s air traffic control system was avoidable. Heidi Alexander told the House of Commons that she had commissioned an independent investigation by the aviation watchdog into the system operated by Nats. The outage, which lasted for four hours on Tuesday, has resulted in the cancellation of more than 2,000 flights and caused significant disruption for passengers travelling into and out of the country. The disruption continued into a second day, with many travellers struggling to secure alternative travel arrangements.

Following a meeting with Martin Rolfe, the chief executive of Nats, Alexander confirmed that a cyberattack could be ruled out as the cause of the incident. However, she expressed her belief that the issue was not unavoidable. Nats has issued an apology for the incident, which marks the third major technical fault in the organisation’s systems over the past three years. Alexander noted that she discussed with Rolfe how Nats responded to resolve the issue and minimise the resulting disruption as quickly as possible. She emphasised the need for tough questions regarding the resilience of Nats systems and highlighted the necessity of considering consumer redress issues for affected passengers.

Earlier on Wednesday, the government expressed its confidence in Rolfe, who has led Nats for 11 years. This statement came despite calls from airlines such as Wizz Air and Ryanair for him to step down. Nats has been instructed to investigate the incident and report back within one week. In addition, Alexander has asked the Civil Aviation Authority to conduct an independent review, with an update to be presented in six months’ time. Airlines UK, which represents the country’s carriers, has written to Alexander to register serious concerns over the technical failure. The organisation noted that the incident has caused major disruption across the UK’s aviation network and is the third major system failure in three years.

Tim Alderslade, the chief executive of Airlines UK, stated that the current system results in airlines picking up the bill for the mistakes of others, while the organisations responsible face little or no financial consequence. He argued that accountability should sit where responsibility lies and suggested that the Civil Aviation Bill offers an opportunity to address this imbalance. The UK Civil Aviation Authority has advised that passengers are unlikely to be entitled to compensation for the delays and cancellations. The authority explained that the disruption is likely to be considered the result of extraordinary circumstances, meaning that passengers are unlikely to receive compensation for issues directly caused by the incident. However, airlines were reminded of their responsibilities to look after affected passengers.

This is not the first time that disruption has blighted Nats’ control system. In 2023, a computer shutdown over the August bank holiday weekend caused chaos for 700,000 passengers. It reportedly took an engineer, who had been unable to correct the fault from home, three hours to get to work. There was another, smaller Nats outage in 2025, which caused 150 cancellations. Nats is a public-private partnership, with the government holding the majority stake. The remaining shares are split between a group of UK airlines, including BA, easyJet and Virgin Atlantic, as well as Heathrow and Nats staff.

Nats first confirmed it was investigating a technical issue at 13:46 BST on Tuesday, noting that it was causing some disruption to flight departures. The glitch occurred at Nats’ Swanwick Centre in Hampshire, where one of its two air traffic control centres is located. The other centre is in Prestwick, Ayrshire. Around 90 minutes later, Nats identified that the issue was with its flight processing system, which processes flight plans and other operational information used by controllers to manage air traffic. By 19:30, Nats said the system issue had been resolved and it was working to clear the backlog of flights.

According to flight analytics firm Cirium, the number of flights that had been cancelled or failed to take off since the fault first emerged had grown to more than 2,000 by Wednesday evening. Tracking site FlightRadar24 indicated that the worst affected airports were Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham. A Heathrow spokesperson said on Wednesday that operations are recovering, with flights operating but knock-on impacts expected as aircraft and crew reposition. At Gatwick, a spokesperson stated that flights have now resumed, though it will take time for operations to fully return to normal. Manchester, Luton, Stansted, Bristol, and Belfast City Airports all said on Wednesday that flights had resumed, though some noted continued knock-on effects.

Sasha and James from south London were due to fly to Madeira for their honeymoon on Tuesday afternoon when their flight was cancelled. The couple, who had been married at the weekend, were boarding their flight to Funchal from Gatwick Airport when they were turned back. They spent three hours in a Wetherspoons restaurant at the airport before eventually returning home to London for the night. They managed to book onto a different flight leaving Gatwick on Wednesday afternoon.