EasyJet demands UK air traffic chief’s sacking over ‘ongoing failure’ to tackle disruption

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EasyJet has called on the board of the UK’s air traffic control provider to sack chief executive Martin Rolfe over his handling of repeated bouts of disruption over the past two summers.

Johan Lundgren, the low-cost airline’s chief executive, wrote this week to the board of National Air Traffic Services (Nats) to demand a leadership change. He accused Rolfe of downplaying problems at the company, a lack of transparency and giving “misleading information” about disruption.

Lundgren joins Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, who has repeatedly called for Rolfe’s departure over the past year.

“I am deeply concerned by the ongoing failure of the CEO to recognise the scale of the problem and to communicate honestly about it,” Lundgren wrote in the letter, a copy of which was seen by the Financial Times.

However, Nats chair Warren East expressed support for Rolfe, and said he had arranged to meet Lundgren. 

“The Nats board is confident that Martin Rolfe and his team have done everything they can to address the issues,” he said.

Nats is a public-private partnership and owned by the British government, pension funds and a group of airlines including easyJet and British Airways.

The provider runs the airspace over the UK and the eastern part of the 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, which together own 42 per cent of the company. EasyJet alone holds a stake of about 6 per cent.

Nats has come under severe pressure from airlines for its performance over the past 18 months.

Most notably, 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 have also faced bouts of disruption because of staff shortages in the control tower at Gatwick airport, which Nats runs.

In 2023, easyJet was forced to cut around 8 per cent of its Gatwick schedule over the peak summer months because of the tower’s limited capacity. The airport also capped movements in September and October because of the problem.

Industry bosses said this year’s performance had been much improved, until short-notice staff absences led to a wave of flight cancellations over the weekend of September 7 and 8. EasyJet alone cancelled 78 flights as a result.

Nats took over the contract to run the control tower at Gatwick in October 2022 and pledged to improve its performance. The company inherited an operation where the number of controllers had fallen by a third since 2016. Lundgren said Rolfe had promised airlines “would not notice” the tower this summer.

“There is a repeated pattern here of the CEO not being transparent about what level of service Nats is able to provide, and of setting out misleading information after the event and failing to understand and acknowledge the issue and have a plan to urgently tackle it,” Lundgren wrote.

“So unfortunately, I have to conclude that Nats can only move on with a change of leadership and that the board must now put in place a new CEO,” he added.

East said Nats had met Gatwick airport biweekly since last summer and attended meetings with easyJet. 

But he added: “The company has said openly on a number of occasions to customers and the public that there is no quick fix to certain issues, in particular the training of new controllers to fill the shortfall we inherited at Gatwick.”

Airlines across Europe have faced disruption because of capacity shortages at air traffic control towers this summer. Regional ATC manager Eurocontrol on Thursday said airlines had suffered an average of 5.4 minutes’ delay per flight because of the issue between June and August.

It blamed a combination of factors for the “high levels of delay”. They included high flight numbers, weather and reductions in the amount of available airspace because of the war in Ukraine.

EasyJet declined to comment.