UK airlines demand NATS executive resignation after 2,000 flight cancellations

Major European airlines are calling for the resignation of National Air Traffic Services (NATS) chief executive officer Martin Rolfe after a technical failure cancelled at least 2,000 flights across the UK. The outage disrupted passenger travel on Tuesday when faults in NATS flight data processing system grounded aircraft nationwide. While the company reported fixing the issue by Wednesday, delays and cancellations continued for several days with airlines suffering millions of pounds in financial loss. Tens of thousands of passengers remain affected by the disruption. Transport minister Heidi Alexander summoned Mr. Rolfe to explain what occurred during the incident. This event marks the second major failure involving NATS within the last three years. The government has ordered the organization to complete its investigation into the cause of the outage within one week. NATS management has ruled out a cyber attack as the origin of the technical fault, attributing it instead to system errors.