On 25 September 2026 the Civil Aviation Authority published the terms of reference of its independent review of Nats, stating the review will also be informed by the events of Monday 21 September, which BBC News reported were a failure at the Nats Prestwick centre.
Hunch. Widening a live review is cheap and the Civil Aviation Authority already has one running, but the Commons sits again only on 12 October, which shuts the usual fast route of a statement or an urgent question.
The review market resolves on a dated Civil Aviation Authority publication at caa.co.uk or a Department for Transport announcement on gov.uk that opens a new review, investigation or inquiry into Nats, or that states the existing resilience review now covers the 21 September Prestwick failure. A press comment with no dated publication resolves NO, and BBC News and the Guardian settle it if the bodies speak only through the media.
We looked for big service failures at UK companies that run licensed critical services, from power to air traffic, where the public or the industry demanded action once the failure was over. We checked whether a government department or a regulator ordered a new or wider review within 31 days. We found eight since 2019. Three are at Nats itself, and the same two bodies, the Department for Transport and the CAA, decided all three. The closest cases come first.