NATS boss dons ‘most disliked in the UK’ badge after September sky‑scramble, claims he loved ignoring Ryanair’s pleas

When a senior civil servant discovers his inbox is a sea of angry emojis, he may as well wear the badge of ‘most disliked in the UK’. That’s exactly the self‑appointed title the NATS chief bestowed on himself after September’s double‑whammy of air‑traffic control failures left the country’s skies looking more like a parking lot than a runway.

The chaos, which grounded thousands of passengers and turned airports into impromptu luggage‑hoarding festivals, was blamed on a pair of system outages that the boss described as ‘unavoidable’. In a surprising twist, he also admitted he quite enjoyed the silence that followed Ryanair’s CEO’s frantic calls to quit, treating each ignored ring as a tiny triumph.

Industry insiders say the chief’s newfound notoriety could be a clever re‑branding exercise: nothing sells ‘tough as nails’ like a reputation for being universally loathed. After all, if you can survive a public hissy‑fit from the nation’s most vocal low‑cost carrier, you’ve earned the right to sit on the throne of British aviation.

Ryanair, meanwhile, has yet to comment on whether the silence was a strategic retreat or simply a case of the phone being on silent. Their own boardroom memes have already begun circulating, featuring a cartoon of a pilot with a mute button.

For the travelling public, the only consolation is that the next round of upgrades to the control system promises fewer outages, though whether the chief will once again relish the quiet remains to be seen.

In the meantime, the NATS boss has taken to posting motivational posters in his office that read ‘Dislike me, but keep the planes moving’, a slogan that may soon become the unofficial motto of a sector that thrives on turbulence.