Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has given NATS one week to investigate the air traffic control systems failure that caused widespread disruption across UK airports and led to around 2,000 flight cancellations.
Alexander met NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe after the failure brought severe disruption to Britain's aviation network, stranding passengers and leaving airlines dealing with substantial knock-on cancellations.
Following the meeting, the Government said NATS had been given a week to report back on the incident, while Alexander announced a separate independent review by the Civil Aviation Authority.
Alexander says failure was not unavoidable
Addressing Parliament after meeting Rolfe, Alexander said the Government did not believe the incident had been caused by a cyberattack.
However, the Transport Secretary made clear that she did not regard the disruption as inevitable, telling MPs: “I do not believe this issue was unavoidable.”
She said passengers should not have to face disruption on this scale and asked the Civil Aviation Authority to conduct an independent review to establish the cause and examine what is required to ensure the resilience of Britain's air traffic control systems.
The CAA review is expected to report within six months.
Around 2,000 flights cancelled
The scale of the disruption continued to become clearer as airlines attempted to restore normal schedules.
Aviation analytics company Cirium said around 2,000 flights to and from UK airports were affected by cancellations across Tuesday and Wednesday, with around 30% of scheduled departures grounded on Tuesday and further cancellations continuing the following day.
Heathrow, Gatwick and other major airports warned passengers of continuing knock-on disruption as airlines repositioned aircraft and crews following the shutdown.
Pressure mounts on NATS chief executive
The latest failure has intensified scrutiny of NATS and its chief executive.
Ryanair has called for Martin Rolfe to resign, while Wizz Air has also demanded reform of the air traffic control provider following repeated disruption to the aviation network.
Ryanair said the latest outage had cost it millions of pounds and affected tens of thousands of its passengers. British Airways also cancelled large numbers of flights as disruption continued.
NATS has said the latest incident was not the same problem that caused the major August 2023 outage and that the new failure affected its flight data system.
The company has pledged to conduct a full investigation to establish the root cause and identify any further action required.
Second major failure in three years
The incident has renewed questions about the resilience of Britain's air traffic control infrastructure following previous failures.
A major NATS outage in August 2023 caused widespread travel disruption and was estimated by airlines to have cost the industry more than £100 million. A separate radar-related technical problem also disrupted flights at major airports in 2025.
The latest investigation will therefore face particular scrutiny over whether lessons from previous incidents were implemented and whether further safeguards are required.
For the Government, the immediate deadline is now clear: NATS has one week to explain what went wrong, while the independent CAA investigation will examine the failure and the wider resilience of the system.