By 12 October 2026 Nats had published no report or statement of causes for the 21 September Prestwick failure on nats.aero, whose latest release is the 18 September preliminary report on the 8 September incident, and GOV.UK carries no Department for Transport statement on it.
Hunch. Nats produced an initial report on the 8 September failure in ten days, but only after the transport secretary set a one-week deadline, and no deadline has been set for Prestwick.
The report market resolves on a publication at nats.aero, first-party for facts about the company, or on a Department for Transport statement on gov.uk confirming that Nats has reported on the Prestwick failure. An interim report counts, a holding statement that names no cause does not, and BBC News and the Guardian settle it if the company publishes nothing.
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.