Ryanair reveals 1,000 flights cancelled last month amid UK air traffic chaos

Budget airline Ryanair has partly blamed the recent “collapse” in Britain’s air traffic control system for cancelling more than 1,000 flights in September.

The Irish carrier said the cancellations were due to two air traffic control (ATC) issues within a fortnight of each other last month, as well as ATC strikes in Belgium and disruption across Europe due to volcanic ash clouds from Mount Etna eruptions.

The boss of Britain’s National Air Traffic Services (Nats), Martin Rolfe, has come under pressure to step down after a spate of air traffic issues caused thousands of flights to be cancelled across the industry last month, impacting hundreds of thousands of passengers.

The most recent was caused by a “connectivity issue” at its Prestwick centre in Scotland, which was unrelated to an ATC (ATC) software fault on September 8, which caused widespread flight chaos.

Ryanair has been among those calling for Mr Rolfe to resign and Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has called a meeting with Nats chairman Sir Warren East, the former chief executive of Rolls-Royce, in the coming weeks to discuss the problems.

Ryanair’s latest traffic figures showed it operated over 111,700 flights last month and carried 20.1 million passengers, up 4% year on year.

Wizz Air also reported passenger data showing a 24% rise year on year in passengers flown last month, to 7.78 million, with capacity up 25.3%.

But Wizz said recently it would cut its flight programme by 5% over the second half of 2026 due to wider Iran war pressures on the travel sector and soaring fuel costs.