Ryanair has called for the boss of the UK’s air traffic control provider to resign following a major technical failure that has caused widespread flight disruption.
Ryanair’s chief operating officer Neal McMahon has called for Martin Rolfe, chief executive of National Air Traffic Services (Nats), to step down following the latest incident.
The technical failure has affected flights across the UK, with Dublin Airport also heavily impacted.
Ryanair's Chief Operations Officer Neal McMahon calls out NATS CEO Martin Rolfe's incompetence with yet another UK ATC System Failure‼️ pic.twitter.com/zumRFgOw2A
— Ryanair (@Ryanair) September 8, 2026
More than 1,900 flights in and out of UK airports have now been cancelled as a result of the disruption, according to aviation analysts Cirium.
The problem began at around 1pm on Tuesday and affected flights at some of Britain’s busiest airports, including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted.
Ryanair said more than 65,000 of its passengers were affected on Tuesday, with 50 flights cancelled that day alone.
The airline has since cancelled more than 250 flights and says the disruption will cost the company millions.
McMahon criticised Nats over the failure, saying the airline had been told the problem was caused by an issue in its flight processing system.
“Airlines across the UK cancelled over a thousand flights, and hundreds of thousands of people were disrupted because the lessons learned for the previous failures have not been delivered by Martin Rolfe,” he told Times Radio.
He also questioned why backup systems had not prevented the widespread disruption.
Ryanair's CEO Michael O'Leary had already called for Rolfe to resign multiple times.
Rolfe is due to meet Alexander on Wednesday to discuss the incident.
He has ruled out a cyber-attack and defended the resilience of Nats’ systems, saying the UK has one of the strongest reputations in the world for aviation safety and resilience.
Nats said the latest problem happened within its flight processing system, but was not the same fault that caused major outages in 2023 and 2025.
The organisation has promised a full investigation into what went wrong.
However, the latest disruption has left thousands of passengers facing long delays, cancellations and overnight stays as airlines work to get people to their destinations.
Passengers travelling through Dublin Airport should check the status of their flight with their airline before heading to the airport, particularly if travelling to or from the UK.
