Ryanair has again called for the head of the National Air Traffic Service (NATS) to step down after an ATC outage caused flight disruption at Gatwick Airport on Saturday.

Flights were grounded and passengers delayed after a system failure at Gatwick’s ATC tower.

A spokesperson for NATS apologised and said the technical issue was ‘quickly fixed’.

A Gatwick Airport spokesperson said on Saturday: “There was an outage to a local NATS system earlier this morning which has now been rectified.

“No cancellations have resulted from this, but some passengers may experience delays.

“We apologise for any inconvenience.”

Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said on Saturday: “After the August NATS system failure Martin Rolfe claimed it was a one in 15 million tech glitch.

“Yet here we are again three months later, and UK NATS fails again at Gatwick.

“Thousands of passengers today face long delays, diversions, and cancellations as NATS under Martin Rolfe’s incompetent leadership fails again. It’s time for Martin Rolfe to go.”