NATS appoints former Rolls-Royce CEO as chair

Warren East, the former boss of Rolls-Royce and ARM Holdings, has been appointed as chair of NATS as the air traffic control company attempts to repair its reputation following last August's IT system meltdown which led to more than 700,000 passengers facing disruption.

East will replace current chair Paul Golby, who will step down after 10 years in the role in September.

Major disruption on the August bank holiday in 2023 that led to the grounding of flights across UK airports was blamed on an IT systems failure of the flight planning system at NATS, which suffered a "significant lack of pre-planning", according to an independent report of the incident released last month.

The report said NATS failed to prepare with "any multi-agency rehearsal of the management of an incident of this nature and scale”, and found that off-site engineers took 90 minutes to arrive to fix the situation.

East, who led aerospace manufacturer Rolls-Royce between 2015 and 2022, and spent 12 years as CEO of chip designer ARM Holdings, is currently a non-executive director for Tokamak Energy, C-Capture and ASML Holding and a strategic advisor to Avina Clean Hydrogen.

NATS CEO Martin Rolfe said East's knowledge and insight into aviation and his experience of technology-led transformation "will be enormously valuable".

“Aviation is vital to our society and economy, and the essential infrastructure which NATS provides underpins that important function," East said in a statement. "The next decade or so brings huge challenge alongside multiple possibilities as the sector faces the necessity of the energy transition together with the opportunities presented by advancing technology."