Nats boss has his pay cut despite 2012

The head of Britain’s air traffic control took home £720,000 last year, including a £303,000 bonus for the Olympics year in which he claimed to deliver a “seamless service”.

Yet that was actually a pay cut for the National Air Traffic Services chief executive, Richard Deakin, who pocketed a £736,000 package the previous year.

Nats, owned by the Government and seven airlines, posted pre-tax profits of £190.7m for the 12 months to April, down from £194.5m a year earlier. But Mr Deakin said Nats had safely handled 2.1 million flights carrying 220 million passengers during the year.

He claimed average delay per flight attributable to Nats’ work was 1.4 seconds, compared with 7.3 seconds the previous year, thanks to new controller tools and systems.

“In total, 99.9 per cent of flights over the UK incurred no Nats-attributable delay,” he added.