The boss of Nats has said he was “the most disliked person in the UK” after air traffic control systems failed twice in September, disrupting flights for hundreds of thousands of passengers.
He told an aviation industry conference: “My name is Martin Rolfe, I’m the CEO of Nats – or as I like to think of myself, the most disliked person in the UK in September.”
Airlines led by Ryanair called for Rolfe’s resignation after two technical failures in a fortnight at the two control centres run by Nats (National Air Traffic Control Services) stopped flights taking off and landing.
However, Rolfe said he was “quite enjoying” ignoring the repeated calls from the Ryanair chief executive, Michael O’Leary, to quit.
Airlines have said the outage on 8 September alone cost them tens of millions of pounds. The chaos that day stemmed from a problem in Nats’s flight control systems and is now the subject of a government-commissioned inquiry.
Rolfe told the Airlines 2026 conference in London on Wednesday that Nats had expected to handle about 8,000 flights that day and 6,000 had flown, although he did not put a number on the long delays that many of those experienced.
On 21 September, a further glitch at Nats’s second control centre at Prestwick in Scotland led to more than 200 flight cancellations.
Rolfe said the causes for both events were unprecedented but had been fixed, although he could not promise there would be no more outages.
He said he understood the disruption for people planning holidays and travel, adding: “If I am the cause of that disruption, I would expect to come in for a lot of flak.
“We do these jobs knowing that they come with that level of personal responsibility and accountability and that’s where I think we’re most tested.
“So yeah, I was definitely unpopular. There hasn’t been a poll, so I can’t say for sure.”
He said he had not considered resigning, despite repeated calls by airlines, particularly Ryanair’s O’Leary, who has demanded his sacking for several years since flights were grounded on the August bank holiday in 2023.
Rolfe said: “To be fair, that is something he says all the time to pretty much everyone, so I’m not going to spend too much time worrying about that. In fact, I quite enjoy not doing that.”
He said that the particular faults experienced in September “will never recur” but added: “Nobody standing on a stage like this can credibly promise that a complex technical system will never experience another fault.”
Speaking on stage later, Neal McMahon, the chief operating officer of Ryanair, criticised Rolfe for pointing out the usual reliability of Nats’s operations: “It’s like listening to the captain of the Titanic saying that 99% of the journey went just grand … We’re still left with two shitshows in September as a result of the system.”
According to Nats’s early report, the software problem in September was not immediately believed to be serious. The Civil Aviation Authority is reviewing the findings and will report to the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, early in 2027.
In a potentially ominous warning for Rolfe, Alexander subsequently told the conference: “Like you, I expect that system to be resilient. And like you, I was angry when it fell short … [it] was simply unacceptable.
She said she would not “jump the gun” before the CAA findings but added: “I can assure you that I will do whatever it takes to ensure that lessons are learned.”
