Ryanair, Europe’s leading low-cost airline, has called for the CEO of the UK’s National Air Traffic Services (NATS), Martin Rolfe, to resign immediately after almost 12,000 Ryanair passengers travelling to and from London-Stansted Airport (STN) on May 31, 2025, were made to suffer what the airline described as unnecessary delays of up to 50 minutes due to staff shortages among NATS-employed air traffic controllers.
While Ryanair has long campaigned for reform to ensure air traffic control centers are fully staffed to handle the forecast flows of air traffic volumes, the airline says that air traffic control (ATC) delays are getting worse, “as evidenced by the delays to and from London Stansted due to NATS staff shortages.”
The latest incident comes just a single day after Ryanair launched its ATC ‘League of Delays’, published on May 30, 2025. The list of countries published by the carrier highlights the nations whose short-staffed and allegedly “mismanaged” air traffic control centers are causing the worst delays for Ryanair flights and passengers in 2025.
The published list shows, by country, the number of flights operated by Ryanair Group airlines between January 1, 2025, and May 26, 2025, that were subjected to delays. France tops the list with 15,634 flights, followed by Spain with 11,576, and Germany with 4,367. Portugal took fourth spot with 2,601 flights, while the UK is ranked fifth with 1,642 flights and more than 295,000 passengers delayed.
Ryanair states that 2024 was a record year for ATC delays in European airspace despite 5% fewer flights than before the pandemic. This states the airline, “was due to National ATCs being mismanaged and short-staffed, especially for the first wave of morning flights. While ATC delays soared in 2024, the carrier points out that ATC fees charged to airlines rose by double the rate of inflation ( up by 35% since COVID).
“The EU Commission and governments have taken no action to fix their shoddy ATC services, and ATC delays will now be even worse in Summer 2025 as a result,” said an airline in a statement.
“Our ATC ‘League of Delays’ exposes Europe’s worst ATCs for delays due to mismanagement and staff shortages from January 2025 to May 2025,” said Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary. “We will hold EU Transport Ministers responsible for allowing such unnecessary and avoidable ATC delays to repeatedly occur.”
“National ATCs are made aware of airline schedules almost 12 months in advance, so there is no reason for them not to adequately staff up to manage this traffic. This is especially important for the first wave of morning flights as any morning delays knock on to flights throughout the rest of the day. Fixing Europe’s ATC staff shortages as well as protecting overflights during national ATC strikes would eliminate 90% of the EU’s ATC delays, but Transport Ministers won’t take any action,” he added.
In the meantime, Ryanair is calling on its passengers to visit its ‘Air Traffic Control Ruined My Flight’ webpage to “force national Transport Ministers across Europe to take action to properly staff their national ATC services and avoid record ATC flight delays this summer.”
