Transport secretary Heidi Alexander said on Wednesday 23 September that she will meet the chairman of National Air Traffic Services (NATS) "in the coming weeks", as pressure mounts on the organisation's chief executive, Martin Rolfe, to resign following the second air traffic control failure to hit Bristol Airport in a fortnight.
Monday's fault, a "connectivity issue" at NATS's Prestwick centre in Scotland, forced the cancellation of more than 170 flights nationwide and led to delays of up to two hours at Bristol Airport, with departures to Barcelona and Nice among those cancelled. The Civil Aviation Authority has since ruled the disruption an "extraordinary circumstance", meaning affected passengers are unlikely to be entitled to compensation.
Speaking to the Times, Alexander said she had held a "full and frank conversation" with Rolfe and told him directly of her "anger at the situation". She added: "The scale of the disruption that we experienced yesterday was bad enough and to see the impact at Prestwick yesterday was obviously very concerning to me. For people using our airports they would feel it adds injury to insult." She confirmed she would meet Sir Warren East, the NATS chairman and former Rolls-Royce chief executive, to discuss the organisation's leadership.
Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary used a press conference in London on Wednesday to repeat his call for Rolfe to go, saying a teenager "would be more competent or would deliver more effective service". In a statement published on Ryanair's corporate website, the airline said Rolfe was an "incompetent