Ryanair chief Michael O'Leary accuses government of 'trying to protect' £1.4m-a-year air traffic control boss and it's 'beyond comprehension' he's still in a job after system meltdown

The Ryanair boss today repeated calls for the chief executive of Britain's main air traffic control provider to quit after technical issues caused major flight disruption.Michael O'Leary accused under-fire Martin Rolfe, who is in charge of National Air Traffic Services (NATS), of 'hiding behind safety' and insisted: 'He should be sacked'.It comes as dozens more flights in and out of Britain were cancelled today as chaos caused by major technical issues with air traffic control systems entered a third day.A total of 51 services at UK airports have been axed today. London Heathrow was worst affected with 28 flights cancelled, including 21 arrivals and seven departures.Some 11 further flights were cancelled at Gatwick and five at Glasgow along with a handful of other services across Aberdeen , London City, Luton and Manchester.Speaking to reporters in Dublin today, Mr O'Leary said of Mr Rolfe: 'He keeps hiding behind safety. You know, you can't run a safe airspace by grounding every aircraft.'You know, it's nonsense, so we think he should go. But then, it's 49 per cent owned by the UK Government, and they're clearly trying to protect him.'It is beyond my comprehension how the guy who has visited three collapses on UK ATC (air traffic control) is asked to do the investigation into his own screw-ups. So we think he should be sacked and somebody competent brought in to do the job.'Despite having presided over three major failures in recent years, Mr Rolfe earned £1.42million in pay and bonuses last year and £1.49million the year before. Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary speaks to reporters ahead of the airline's AGM in Dublin today National Air Traffic Services (NATS) boss Martin Rolfe has faced calls to resign this weekBut he was summoned for talks with Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander yesterday amid growing calls from within the industry for him to be sacked.Mr Rolfe has been given a week to report back on the cause behind the technical failure which is expected to have cost the industry tens of millions of pounds.The minister later told MPs she did not believe the glitch was 'unavoidable' and had asked the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to conduct an independent review.'A four-hour air traffic outage yesterday left hundreds of thousands of passengers facing cancellations, diversions and delays,' she told the Commons.'I would like to apologise wholeheartedly to passengers for this disruption,' she added, vowing to leave 'no stone unturned' in getting to the bottom of the failure. Flight cancellations at UK airports today National Air Traffic Services (NATS) serves 15 UK airports. Here are the cancellations at each of them today:HeathrowDepartures - 7Arrivals - 21GatwickDepartures - 5Arrivals - 6GlasgowDepartures - 3Arrivals - 2London CityArrivals - 2ManchesterDepartures - 2LutonDepartures - 1Arrivals - 1AberdeenDepartures - 1No cancellations today at Belfast City, Belfast International, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Farnborough, Southampton and Stansted. 'This morning I have spoken to NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe, who informed me this outage was due to a technical issue at their Swanwick site.'So, while my understanding from NATS is that we can rule out a cyber-attack on this occasion, I do not believe this issue was unavoidable.'But I am clear that passengers should not have to face this disruption. I have therefore asked the CAA to conduct an independent review.'Despite this Andy Burnham's spokesman said the Prime Minister still had confidence in the air traffic control provider's head.Mr Burnham's spokesman said Ms Alexander had met with Mr Rolfe to 'raise significant concerns at the scale of disruption on behalf of both passengers and industry'.'She's asked him to carry out a full investigation into what happened to make sure that lessons are learned,' he added. 'She set a deadline for them to report back in a week's time.'Asked whether the Government still had confidence in Mr Rolfe, he said: 'We have confidence in him and he's been tasked with the investigation.'The disruption that has caused chaos for 330,000 passengers since Tuesday started to ease this morning, with schedules set to return to normal later today.System issues have caused more than 2,000 flights to be cancelled so far and led to calls for Mr Rolfe to resign – including from Mr O'Leary, who had previously called his position 'untenable'.Airlines continue to face knock-on impacts as staff scramble to reposition crews and aircraft following 2,145 flights axed on Tuesday and yesterday, according to Cirium.A total of 399 flights were cancelled or did not fly yesterday. The worst affected airport was Heathrow, which saw 79 out of a total of 666 departures affected.Airline bosses have been left furious, with Wizz Air also publicly demanding for Mr Rolfe to be sacked.Airlines UK, the association of UK airlines, said more than 155,000 passengers had flights cancelled while more than 180,000 experienced delays, taking the total number affected beyond 330,000. Passengers wait to drop their bags at London Heathrow Airport's Terminal Two yesterday Passengers stand with their luggage as they queue to check-in at London Gatwick yesterdayIn a strongly worded letter, the association's chief executive Tim Alderslade wrote to the Transport Secretary yesterday to raise 'serious concern' and call for action.'Airlines should not be left as the insurer of last resort for failures they did not cause and cannot control,' he said.The letter, which was highly critical of NATS which serves 15 UK airports, said the flight-processing system had failed and the 'full scale' of the disruption was 'still becoming clear'.'This kind of failure simply cannot happen again,' it said.The CAA said last night that passengers, many of whom were forced to book hotels and alternative last-minute flights, are unlikely to be entitled to any compensation over the disruption.It said under passenger rights rules, the NATS issue is 'likely to be considered the result of extraordinary circumstances'.'This means that although passengers should be looked after by airlines, they are unlikely to be entitled to compensation for delays or cancellations that were directly caused by the incident,' it said in a statement.Mr Rolfe yesterday apologised for the widespread chaos for which he said he took 'full responsibility'.'We will be doing a very thorough and full investigation,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 'We have at this point ruled out a cyber-attack.''Inevitably, things do go wrong in complex systems. We never want them to. We always hope they won't, but we absolutely plan for them to and make sure we handle them properly.'Defending the system, Mr Rolfe added the UK has 'one of the best reputations' globally for its air traffic control service, from both a safety and resilience perspective.He said since NATS was partially privatised 25 years ago more than £1billion had been invested in the technology 'consistently improving' the service and its safety.'But all of those things don't detract from the fact that when these things happen, it is disappointing and upsetting, for which I apologise.'NATS said the failure occurred in its flight processing system at its Swanwick headquarters near Southampton, where air traffic controllers guide flights across all UK airspace.But it said it was not the same issue which triggered the outages in 2023 and 2025 which also caused mass disruption.Mr Rolfe said that his teams were now focused on dealing with the 'huge tail of disruption' caused by the outage, before they could examine the cause behind it.'What I will say is, I don't believe we've ever seen an incident happen more than once, so this will be something different that we've never seen in 50 years of operation.'Meanwhile baggage reclaim descended into chaos at major airports with passengers unable to retrieve their suitcases after the NATS meltdown.Angry travellers separated from their luggage described packed baggage halls as 'apocalyptic' and 'carnage' amid fears violence and rioting would break out.Rows of abandoned bags lined the floor of Heathrow Terminal Five's baggage hall, with passengers' videos showing chaotic scenes as they tried to find their suitcases.READ MORE: The head of air traffic – who earns almost 10x the PM and loves WFH