The heads of the two biggest discount carriers in the UK are calling for a change of leadership at the country’s air traffic management provider after repeated disruption during the busy summer travel season.

Ryanair’s outspoken chief executive officer (CEO) Michael O’Leary called for Nats CEO Martin Rolfe’s resignation after a staffing shortage at London’s Gatwick Airport on Thursday (Sep 14) led to schedule disruptions and cancellations. EasyJet’s CEO Johan Lundgren said Nats had let down airlines all through the summer and caused more than a months’ worth of disruptions. 

The latest setback – which Gatwick blamed on short-notice ATC staff absences – came less than three weeks after Nats experienced an air-traffic outage which delayed and cancelled hundreds of flights on one of the busiest travel days of the year. Air traffic control emerged as a persistent pinch-point for the aviation industry amid a surge in demand for travel, with ATC strikes in France and staffing shortages from the US to the UK. 

Nats blamed last month’s outage on an anomaly in its software, which confused two geographical checkpoints around 4,000 nautical miles apart when processing an airline’s flight plan, in a report last week. Ryanair dismissed the finding as insufficient, claiming it understated the disruption caused and didn’t explain why Nats’ backup system failed. 

Nats worked with Gatwick airport and airlines to minimise disruption on Thursday, it said in a statement. The ATC provider said it had recruited new air traffic controllers who are due to start after completing their training, in line with the plan that was agreed when it took over ATC operations at the hub last October. BLOOMBERG