The UK's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is reviewing the passenger impact of the Sept. 8 NATS outage and the air traffic provider's resilience plans, with its final report due by March 8, 2027.
The CAA's review will examine the outage's causes, its effects on passengers, NATS' plans for system renewal and resilience, and its implementation of recommendations from earlier reviews. The regulator said its work will be informed by other similar events, including a separate fault at Prestwick on Sept. 21.
NATS traced the Sept. 8 outage to a defect in a software module within its National Airspace System (NAS). The defect corrupted flight data used by controllers at London Area Control. Traffic restrictions lasted about six hours. NATS handled 6,094 flights, compared with a forecast of about 8,000, and said more than 2,000 flights were delayed, canceled or diverted.
NATS attributed the Sept. 21 disruption at its Prestwick Centre to a network fault and said it was unrelated to the earlier software defect. Its report, citing Cirium data, said 117 departures were likely canceled because of the fault. Ryanair called for NATS Chief Executive Martin Rolfe to resign after both incidents. After the Prestwick disruption, the airline said more than 140 of its flights were delayed and more than 25,000 passengers were expected to be disrupted.
The Guardian reported that Rolfe joked at the Airlines 2026 conference in London on Nov. 11 that he had been “the most disliked person in the UK in September.” The newspaper also reported that he had not considered resigning despite calls from Ryanair Chief Executive Michael O’Leary.
The CAA expects to issue an initial report by the end of January 2027. Its call for stakeholder input closes Nov. 23, ahead of the final report deadline in March.
