Overview

• On July 30, a NATS technical fault briefly grounded departures at Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton airports, triggering widespread delays during the summer peak.
• British Airways apologized to passengers and EasyJet advised customers to check their flight status as airlines scrambled to manage cancellations and backlogs.
• Ryanair’s COO Neal McMahon demanded NATS CEO Martin Rolfe’s resignation, accusing him of continuous mismanagement and urging government intervention.
• The outage echoes an August 2023 NATS blackout that disrupted air travel for 700,000 people, highlighting chronic underinvestment in backup systems.
• Formal investigations by UK regulators are underway and multi-year modernization plans aim to bolster redundancy in the country’s aging air traffic control infrastructure.