Martin Rolfe, 51, the senior executive of National Air Traffic Services (Nats) said he took “full responsibility” after Tuesday’s outage left more than 2,000 flights to be cancelled
Huge pressure is mounting on Britain’s top air traffic control boss to quit over the flightmare air chaos shutdown. Martin Rolfe, 51, the senior executive of National Air Traffic Services (Nats) was paid £1.5 million, including £871,000 in bonuses, last year.
The executive has been accused of overseeing a “litany of failures” during his time as CEO. And this week’s “avoidable” system collapse, which resulted in 500,000 passenger journeys being affected, should be “third strike and you’re out” according to critics.
The Nats chief executive found himself overseeing the huge failure just three years after promising a major meltdown “won’t happen again”.
Ryanair chief operations officer Neal McMahon said Mr Rolfe must resign, with an airline statement saying: “They have a crap system and they don’t invest in it.
“Instead of investing in the system, they pay big bonuses to management and they pay huge dividends to the shareholders.”
Wizz Air UK boss Yvonne Moynihan: “I think in any industry, when you’ve had three failures, you need to consider that three strikes and you’re out.”
Technical issues with air traffic control systems have caused more than 2,000 flights arriving or departing the UK to be cancelled since Tuesday.
The major disruption finally began to ease yesterday (Thurs) with only a handful of flights cancelled or delayed.
Nats has said a full investigation will be conducted into the issue.
The air traffic services provider has apologised for disruption to passengers and airlines, for which Mr Rolfe said he took “full responsibility”.
Downing Street has said it still has confidence in Mr Rolfe despite the recent disaster.