Ryanair urges Nats boss to quit over Gatwick ‘mess’ – but promises no cancellations

Ryanair says it won’t cancel any flights despite a cap on arrivals and departures at Gatwick airport, and has demanded the chief executive of air traffic control provider Nats “step down” over staff shortages.

Europe’s biggest budget carrier has a relatively small presence at the Sussex airport, with no aircraft based there. The main operation is between Gatwick and Dublin.

In an angry statement, Ryanair said it pays Nats almost €100m (£87m) annually for air-traffic control services.

Its competitor, easyJet, is expected to bear the brunt of cancellations as the airport limits the number of takeoffs and landings until Sunday because of staff sickness, including Covid, in the control tower.

“It is the most basic requirement to hire and train adequate staff numbers including standby coverage,” Ryanair said.

“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 28 August, 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 air-traffic control staff shortages and should now do the right thing and step down as Nats CEO so that someone competent can do the job. We call on the CAA to immediately intervene and protect passengers from this ongoing UK air-traffic control shambles.”

In a statement, Nats said: “We have worked very closely with Gatwick airport throughout. Given the levels of sickness we have experienced over the last few weeks we believe it is the responsible thing to do to limit the number of flights this week in order to reduce the risk of daily disruption to passengers using the airport.

“We have trained as many air traffic controllers as possible this year in the Gatwick tower and have safely managed over 180,000 flights so far. However, with 30 per cent of tower staff unavailable for a variety of medical reasons including Covid, we cannot manage the number of flights that were originally planned for this week.

“Our operational resilience in the tower will improve as our staff return to work and we move out of the summer schedule, which is particularly busy at Gatwick.

“We continue to train additional air traffic controllers and expect another group to qualify to work in the tower over coming months, ready for next summer. Even an experienced air traffic controller takes at least nine months to qualify at Gatwick and very few are able to do so, as Gatwick is such a busy and complex air traffic environment.”