Who is the CEO of Nats - as Ryanair demands Martin Rolfe, who earned £1.3m this year, to resign

Ryanair has called for the boss of Britain’s “shambles” National Air Traffic Services (Nats) to resign after staff shortages have caused flights to be limited at Gatwick Airport.

The airline has promised passengers that it will not scrap flights due to the measure which is in place this week saying it is “unacceptable” that Nats has enforced this because of its “failure to adequately staff”.

The airline added that Nats has been a “shambles for years” and the “mess” over the August bank holiday has “still not been explained”.

A daily 800-flight limit, affecting both departures and arrivals, has been imposed at Gatwick Airport from Monday (25 September) until Sunday (1 October) due to air traffic control staffing problems caused by sickness.

Around 30% of air traffic services (Nats) tower staff are unavailable for a variety of medical reasons including Covid.

It has caused several flights arriving to and from Gatwick to be delayed or cancelled over recent days.

Nats said it is “very sorry” that staff being off ill “will have an almost immediate impact” on the airport and confirmed it is working to a plan agreed with the airport to “deliver further resilience ahead of summer 2024”.

It comes after a Nats air traffic control (ATC) failure caused chaos across major UK airports over the August bank holiday. Hundreds of flights were delayed or cancelled on 28 August due to a  "one in 15 million" event that has never happened before, according to the company.

The chief executive of Nats, Martin Rolfe, said the system shut itself down after receiving highly unusual duplicate "markers" on a flight plan.

Nats said it had taken measures to prevent the situation from happening again while the UK’s aviation regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), announced an independent review which is expected to report in a few months’ time.

Ryanair said the CAA should “immediately intervene and protect passengers from this ongoing UK ATC shambles.

It said it pays Nats almost 100 million euros (£87 million) per year for an ATC service that is “repeatedly short-staffed”.

The airline added: “Nats has been a shambles for years, causing unnecessary disruptions at UK airports including Bristol, Edinburgh and Manchester, and now Gatwick Airport for the past four weeks, including the complete system meltdown on Monday August 28 which brought UK aviation to its knees – a mess that has still not been explained.

“It is clear that Nats CEO Martin Rolfe has taken no action to resolve these ATC staff shortages and should now do the right thing and step down as Nats CEO so that someone competent can do the job.”

Who is Martin Rolfe?

Martin Rolfe, 51,  is the CEO of Nats, the air traffic control system.

He has seen his pay double, taking home £1.3 million this year. On top of his £477,000 basic salary, he received a £281,000 annual bonus, pensions benefits and a backdated £555,000 long-term incentive plan.

He took over as CEO at the company after a similar glitch as the one that happened over the August bank holiday occurred under his predecessor - which also led to the cancellation and delay of hundreds of flights.

Rolfe studied aerospace systems engineering at the University of Southampton, going on to work for the American aerospace firm Lockheed Martin where he worked as director of aviation programmes before becoming managing director.

He switched to take up the same role at NATS in 2012 before gaining his promotion to the top job in 2015.