Fury as UK’s air traffic control boss pocketed up to £900k in bonuses just months before meltdown axed 1,000 flights

THE BUNGLING boss of Britain’s Air Traffic Control systems trousered bonuses of up to £900,000 just months before a meltdown cancelled 1,000 planes, The Sun can reveal. NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe, 54, was handed a £343,070 annual bonus in June after achieving his best performance rating in five years. Britain’s Air Traffic Control systems boss Martin Rolfe trousered bonuses of up to £900,000 just months before a meltdown cancelled 1,000 planes Credit: Alamy The bonuses came just weeks before Tuesday’s major failure at the Swanwick control centre which halted departures at London’s airports Credit: w8media In the same month he was due a second payout of up to £559,280 under a long-term incentive reward scheme, according to Sun analysis of NATS’ company accounts. The bonuses came just weeks before Tuesday’s major failure at the Swanwick control centre which halted departures at London’s airports. Sign up for The Sun newsletter Thank you! Ryanair said 65,000 of its passengers alone were hit and called for “overpaid failure” Rolfe to quit. Delay-hit passengers also joined calls for the aviation fatcat to have his bonus withheld over the latest air nightmare. READ MORE ON FLIGHT CHAOS NATS’ latest annual report, published in June, reveals Rolfe is paid under two separate bonus schemes on top of his £574,671 base salary. The first is an annual bonus worth up to 70 per cent of his salary, scored against targets on profit, flight delays, controller recruitment, carbon emissions, and female recruitment. For the year to March, he received £343,070 for performance, which was 89 per cent of the maximum bonus available to him. The second top-up payment scheme is a five-year, long-term incentive plan worth up to 110 per cent of the CEO’s salary every year. Most read in The Sun It is judged on NATS’ financial performance and climate targets. The bonus is set to be paid in five annual instalments between 2025 and 2029. The accounts state that a portion of the scheme “vested” during the year and was “payable in June 2026”, with a maximum payment of £559,280. It means the two payments due to Rolfe in June total up to a maximum of £902,350. Delay-hit passengers joined calls for the aviation fatcat to have his bonus withheld over the latest air nightmare Credit: Getty Chaotic scenes at Heathrow NATS paperwork seen by The Sun shows Rolfe’s bonus scheme has a clawback clause if he presides over “a major safety or operational incident resulting in serious consequences for the organisation, its customers or air passengers”. But the documents say the clause “has not been used in the last financial year nor the last five years”. Passengers yesterday said NATS should be forced to withhold Rolfe’s bonus after the incident left tens of thousands delayed and out of pocket. Harris Clark, who was heading from Heathrow to US city Seattle on Tuesday when his flight was scrapped at the gate, said the embattled boss should hand in his notice. The 24-year-old PR consultant fumed: “I think it’s such a major crisis, with so many flights affected, that it’s a resigning or sacking matter. “Especially as this happened three years ago as well. It looks like the systems haven’t been updated. “You can’t have the same mistake happening twice without repercussions. “CEOs get massive benefits for poor performance but it doesn’t add up if your company is causing these crises and you’re getting paid obscene amounts of money. “There’s people going to weddings, people visiting family, and it’s just not acceptable that there isn’t a backup system in place that can deal with that kind of technical glitch. “If I’m doing my job and I don’t meet my targets, or I have a disaster, I’m not getting paid a bonus. “Ordinary people who don’t do their job well would face repercussions. “It’s not like this is a one-off – this has happened twice now in three or four years.” June’s payment was the second summer running Rolfe has picked up big bonuses shortly before a system failure. In June last year, he was paid a £310,324 annual bonus plus a £425,000 long-term payout only five weeks before a 20-minute outage last July led to 150 flights being cancelled. His total pay for the year to March was £1,418,000, taking his earnings to more than £10million since he took charge in 2015. He has also been handed two pay rises in a row, 4.5 per cent last year and four per cent this April, taking his basic salary to £574,671. He takes a further £82,885 a year in cash in place of pension contributions. NATS, which is 49 per cent owned by the taxpayer, made a £213million profit last year and paid £69million in dividends. Rolfe’s bonuses for the year covering Tuesday’s failure will be decided next June, with a maximum performance payment of £402,270 and a maximum long-term incentive payment of £559,280. It means he could be in line for another £960,000 bonus next June with his salary also likely to increase. NATS was asked to comment. Comment now