UK's air traffic control chief on the brink as Ryanair calls for him to be sacked – airport chaos to last for DAYS

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Martin Rolfe will appear before Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander later today

The head of Britain's air traffic control provider is on the brink of resigning, with chaos across UK airports set to last for days.

Mass delays and the cancellation of more than 1,000 flights, which has left hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded, have ramped up pressure on Nats and its boss Martin Rolfe.

Ryanair, Europe's biggest airline, has been calling for Mr Rolfe to resign since 2023, while Wizz Air's UK managing director also said he should consider his position.

When asked whether he would quit, Mr Rolfe said there would be "lots of time for that later", but his focus now was on making sure the problem was solved."

Ryanair's Chief Executive told Times Radio: "Nats told us it was a flight planning processing failure, which is exactly the same issue that happened in 2023.

"If you remember, in 2023 there was an issue with a flight plan, and it sent the system in a in a loop that eventually caused it to shut down.

"We’re told that that was a rogue flight plan and we’re told yesterday this was a spurious flight plan which caused the same outage and our question is like: these things can happen, but where’s the backup systems?"

He added: "The failing is that the backup system was unable to kick in and work, like it’s not a backup system if it shuts down. That’s the definition of a backup is that when the primary system goes down, that you can revert and keep going."

Mr Rolfe, who apologised to those affected by the issue, denied Britain was worse than other countries and said the country's air traffic service was well regarded from a safety and resilience perspective.

"We have, at this point, ruled out cyber [attacks]," Mr Rolfe told the BBC when asked about the cause, adding he believed it would be different to previous outages.

In August that year, more than 700,000 passengers experienced disruption when flights were grounded at UK airports as Nats suffered a technical glitch while processing a flight plan.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander is set to speak with Mr Rolfe before she addresses MPs in the Commons for the second reading of the Civil Aviation Bill.

Last July, a "radar-related issue" caused an air traffic control failure that grounded flights across the UK, disrupting thousands of passengers and forcing the cancellation of more than 160 flights.

The problem happened at Nats’ control centre in Swanwick, Hampshire, and impacted the vast majority of England and Wales.

Elsewhere, the managing director of Wizz Air UK said there are “serious questions about the resilience” of the UK’s air traffic control service.

Yvonne Moynihan told the BBC: "We had 24 cancellations yesterday and over 21 other flights that were disrupted with long-term delays. So that’s over 10,000 passengers coming in and out of London have had major disruption.”

Ms Moynihan added: "This is now the third time that we have had an air traffic control failure, and during the peak period as well. So major questions need to be asked

"There are serious questions about the resilience of this system."

Asked whether Mr Rolfe should consider resigning, Ms Moynihan said: "I think in any industry, when you’ve had three failures, you need to consider that three strikes and you’re out.

"So I think it’s certainly something that he needs to look at...a third time and a third excuse is not enough anymore."