The dismissal of the chief executive of the UK air traffic control agency is demanded by easyJet, aligned with Ryanair, because of the repeated disruptions that have taken place over the last two summers.
The chief executive of the budget airline, Johan Lundgren, this week sent a letter to the board of National Air Traffic Services (Nats) asking for a change of leadership.
It accused Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe of downplaying the agency’s problems, lacking transparency and providing “misleading information” about the disorders.
Mr Lundgren sided with Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary, who has repeatedly called for Rolfe’s resignation over the past year.
“I am deeply concerned about the chief executive’s continued failure to acknowledge the scale of the problem and to report honestly on it,” Mr Lundgren wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Financial Times.
However, Nats president Warren East expressed his support for Mr Rolfe and said he had arranged to meet with Johan Lundgren.
“The Nats board is confident that Martin Rolfe and his team have done all they can to address the issues,” he said.
Nats is a public-private partnership owned by the UK government, pension funds and a group of airlines including easyJet and British Airways.
The provider manages the airspace over the UK and the eastern Atlantic and also provides air traffic control services at many of the UK’s busiest airports. An easyJet executive sits on the board as a representative of Nats’ private shareholders, who together own 42% of the company, with only the financial airline holding a stake of around 6%.
Nats has come under pressure from carriers over its performance over the past 18 months.
It is recalled that the UK’s air traffic control system failed over the August bank holiday weekend last summer, affecting more than 700,000 passengers during one of the busiest travel periods of the year.
Airlines also faced disruption due to staff shortages at the control tower at Gatwick, managed by Nats.
EasyJet was forced last year to cut around 8% of its schedule at Gatwick during the peak summer months due to limited control tower capacity.
The airport also restricted movements in September and October due to the problem.
Although this year’s performance has improved, staff shortages led to a number of flight cancellations at Gatwick last weekend. easyJet, for example, cancelled 78 flights as a result.
Nats was awarded the contract to operate the control tower at Gatwick in October 2022 and committed to improving its performance. The company inherited a business where the number of controllers had fallen by a third since 2016.
Regional ATC manager Eurocontrol said on Thursday that airlines suffered an average of 5.4 minutes of delay per flight because of the problem between June and August. It blamed a combination of factors for the “high levels of delay”. These included the large number of flights, the weather and a reduction in available airspace due to the war in Ukraine.
