Ryanair gave an update on Friday morning
Ryanair has consistently railed against Nats(Image: Mrkit99 via Getty Images)
Budget carrier Ryanair has issued an update, confirming that it cancelled 1,000 flights.
It partly attributed the recent “collapse” of Britain’s air traffic control system for the scrapping more than 1,000 flights in September. The Irish airline said the cancellations stemmed from two separate air traffic control (ATC) failures within a fortnight of one another last month, alongside ATC strikes in Belgium and widespread disruption across Europe caused by volcanic ash clouds from eruptions at Mount Etna.
The head of Britain’s National Air Traffic Services (Nats), Martin Rolfe, has faced mounting calls to quit following a string of air traffic failures that led to thousands of flight cancellations across the industry last month, leaving hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded.
The most recent incident was triggered by a “connectivity issue” at its Prestwick centre in Scotland, which was unrelated to an ATC software fault on September 8 that sparked widespread travel chaos.
Ryanair has been among those demanding Mr Rolfe’s resignation, while Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has arranged a meeting with Nats chairman Sir Warren East, the former chief executive of Rolls-Royce, in the coming weeks to address the ongoing issues.
Latest Ryanair figures
Ryanair’s most recent traffic statistics revealed the airline operated over 111,700 flights last month, carrying 20.1 million passengers, a rise of 4% year on year. Wizz Air also released passenger data showing a 24% increase year on year in passengers flown last month, reaching 7.78 million, with capacity up 25.3%.
Yet Wizz announced recently it would slash its flight schedule by 5% over the second half of 2026 owing to broader Iran war pressures on the travel sector and spiralling fuel costs.
Following the latest disruption, easyJet said it “calls into question the resilience of Nats’ systems” and Jet2 said customers and airlines need “action, accountability and proper resilience”.
Calls to resign
On September 21, chief operations officer for Ryanair Neal McMahon said: “Martin Rolfe has presided over repeated system failures, repeated passenger disruption and repeated failures to deliver an effective back-up system.
“Enough is enough. Martin Rolfe should resign today.”
Tim Alderslade, chief executive of industry body Airlines UK, said ATC was “critical national infrastructure” which “must be resilient enough to keep people moving”.
He added: “Yet another Nats failure is causing delays and disruption for passengers and airlines alike, and comes just days after its report into the most recent major outage. Passengers and airlines deserve better and the independent CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) report, together with the forthcoming Civil Aviation Bill, must address the underlying weaknesses in the system so that these failures stop happening.”