By Sarah Young and Sam Tobin
LONDON, Sept 9 (Reuters) – Flights from British airports resumed early on Wednesday after a major air traffic control failure, but hubs warned that it would take time for operations to return to normal and questions mounted about the reliability of Britain’s aviation systems.
The hours-long shutdown on Tuesday, which resulted in the cancellation of more than 1,000 flights and left hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded, has ramped up pressure on air traffic control provider NATS and its boss Martin Rolfe.
Transport minister Heidi Alexander will later on Wednesday hear from Rolfe after she summoned him to explain what happened amid concerns that the infrastructure and technology are not up to scratch.
The shutdown comes three years after the last system meltdown in August 2023, when cancelled flights on one of the busiest travel days of the year cost airlines £100 million ($135 million).
A radar-related technical issue also disrupted flights in July 2025, affecting major airports including London’s Heathrow, Britain’s largest.
“I am seeking assurances that lessons will be learned and systems that support aviation are up to the job,” Alexander said on X.
NATS BOSS UNDER PRESSURE
Ryanair, Europe’s biggest airline, has been calling for Rolfe to resign since 2023.
Yvonne Moynihan, managing director of Wizz Air in the UK, said on Wednesday that Rolfe should consider his position.
“I think in any industry when you have had three failures you need to consider, three strikes and you’re out,” she told the BBC.
Rolfe on Wednesday apologised to those affected by the issue, ruling out a cyberattack as the cause, and said he believed the issue would be different to previous outages.
“I would say the UK has one of the best reputations in the world for its air traffic control service, both from a safety perspective and from a resilience perspective,” he told the BBC, adding that he took responsibility for the problem but said his main focus was on safety.
As operations restarted, Heathrow said passengers should check with their airline before heading to the airport as schedules would have changed due to the problems on Tuesday.
“We are expecting knock-on impacts as aircraft and crew reposition,” the UK’s busiest hub said in a statement.
“We know how frustrating this situation is and … are working closely with our local NATS team and airline partners to recover normal operations as quickly as possible.”
London Gatwick, Britain’s second busiest airport, also advised passengers to check with their airline first.
Ryanair said around 150,000 of its passengers had been affected on Tuesday and it cancelled more than 200 flights, while British Airways said it had cancelled or diverted 100 flights with tens of thousands impacted.
NATS is a public-private partnership which is partially owned by airlines including British Airways and easyJet, pension funds and the government.
($1 = 0.7379 pounds)
(Reporting by Sarah Young and Sam Tobin; editing by Michael Holden and Toby Chopra)
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