Heathrow and Gatwick flights chaos: Air traffic boss Martin Rolfe on £1.5m given week to come up with answers as he faces call to quitMore than 2,000 flights have been cancelled after a computer problem at the National Air Traffic Services caused major disruption at UK airports
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Michael Howie, Senior News Editor|Nicholas Cecil, Chief Reporter @nicholascecil1 minute ago
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Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has given air traffic chief Martin Rolfe a week to explain how the disastrous flights meltdown at Heathrow, Gatwick and other airports happened.
The Cabinet minister held urgent talks with Mr Rolfe, chief executive of the National Air Traffic Services, on Wednesday morning over the crisis which has led to more than 2,000 flights being cancelled.
Nats chief executive Martin RolfePA
Afterwards Downing Street said: “The Transport Secretary met the chief of National Air Traffic Services (Nats) to raise significant concerns at the scale of disruption on behalf of both passengers and industry.
“She’s asked him to carry out a full investigation into what happened to make sure that lessons are learned, so that this doesn’t happen again.
“She set a deadline for them to report back in a week’s time.”
Asked whether Ms Alexander and Andy Burnham still have confidence in Mr Rolfe, the Prime Minister’s spokesman added: “It’s self-evident that she wants answers and the full investigation to be reported back in a week’s time, and she’s got confidence in him to deliver that.”
This statement appeared to fall short of full confidence in Mr Rolfe.
Pressed whether this meant the Government’s confidence in the Nats’ chief was conditional on the outcome of the investigation, the spokesman replied: “We have confidence in him and he’s been tasked with the investigation, which will report in a week’s time.”
Earlier, Mr Rolfe dodged questions on whether he should resign as airlines demanded he quit after a system collapse sparked travel chaos.
Tens of thousands of passengers were caught up in the disruption, which was continuing on Wednesday with further cancellations and delays as airlines dealt with the knock-on impacts at airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted.
According to FlightRadar, 246 flights had been cancelled at Heathrow Airport by 6am on Wednesday, while Gatwick passengers faced 33 cancellations.
Speaking to the BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, Mr Rolfe, who last year was awarded £1.5million in pay, apologised for the issue but dodged questions over whether he would resign.
He said: “Inevitably, things do go wrong in complex systems.”
Delayed passengers wait with their luggage at Terminal 3 of Heathrow Airport on Tuesday, September 8AFP/Getty
Mr Rolfe added: “Nats was actually a partial privatisation 25 years ago.
“We’ve invested way more than a billion in technology over that time, our service has consistently improved. Our safety is consistently improved from a very good base.
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“But all of those things don’t detract from the fact that when these things happen, it is disappointing and upsetting, for which I apologise.”
On the cause of the problem, Mr Rolfe said a “thorough” investigation would take place, but ruled out a cyber attack.
He added: “My focus and that of the team has been on both getting our system operating back up normally, which it is now, but there’s obviously a huge tail to the disruption and we’ll be working on that through the course of today.
“And then our attention will turn to exactly what’s happened in this particular incident.”
Delayed passengers wait with their luggage at HeathrowAFP/Getty
Ryanair said more than 65,000 of its passengers had been disrupted and it had cancelled more than 50 scheduled flights.
British Airways (BA) said it was forced to cancel or divert more than 100 flights on Tuesday which had impacted “tens of thousands of customers”.
Mr Rolfe has been under fire from Wizz Air and Ryanair after the latest issue which saw some passengers trapped on planes on runways for hours.
Neal McMahon, Ryanair’s chief operating officer, called on Mr Rolfe to resign, saying: “How many more failures do passengers have to suffer before overpaid failure Nats CEO Martin Rolfe accepts responsibility for his repeated mismanagement and resigns?
“Over three years after Nats’ catastrophic 2023 system meltdown, it’s clear that nothing has changed, with UK passengers once again suffering avoidable ATC (air traffic control) delays of up to eight hours today due a critical Nats ATC system failing.”
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