‘Mark my words’: Prof KV Subramanian says ‘unraveling of the West has started’ after UK airports outage
“We often complain about India, but our aviation infra & customer service are often better than the West,” said Milind Deora.
- Sep 10, 2026,
- Updated Sep 10, 2026 9:50 AM IST
Economist and former Chief Economic Adviser to the government, Professor KV Subramanian said the West is unraveling in reference to the hours-long outage, which led to 2,000 cancellations and cost airlines millions of pounds in the UK. The economist was responding to a post by Milind Deora who spoke about his experience flying across Europe after the outage.
“I’ve long maintained (since the Global Financial Crisis to be precise) that the unraveling of the West has started. Mark my words: Future generations will ask why their great grandparents didn’t have the wisdom to see where the West was headed & chose to leave India to move there,” said Subramanian.
Deora said that his flight to London was diverted to Amsterdam due to the UK airport shutdown, after which they were stuck at Schipol for 18 hours but the luggage was not offloaded, and the Dutch transport strike put the trains out of operation. “We often complain about India, but our aviation infra & customer service are often better than the West,” said Deora.
While some users commended India’s airports, some pointed out that not everything is rosy. While one user said everything in India is better if one is from the privileged class, while another pointed out that the strike across the Netherlands was due to a demand for better pay, even when they are far better paid than their Indian counterparts.
UK AIRPORT OUTAGE
Flights resumed at major airports following an hours-long systems failure at Britain's NATS air traffic control provider on Tuesday. The breakdown led to about 2,000 cancellations over Tuesday and Wednesday, stranded hundreds of thousands of passengers and cost airlines millions of pounds. This marks the second major NATS failure in three years.
The government said NATS has one week to investigate the failure and report back, as pressure mounted on chief executive Martin Rolfe. Transport minister Heidi Alexander summoned Rolfe to explain what went wrong. A spokesperson for Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the government had confidence in Rolfe but had given him a week to report on the incident.
MUST READ | Heathrow ATC disruption hits India-UK connectivity, multiple flights affected
After meeting Rolfe, Alexander told parliament she did not believe the outage had been caused by a cyberattack but said, "I do not believe this issue was unavoidable." She also announced a separate independent review by the Civil Aviation Authority, which is due to report back in six months. She said passengers should not have to face this disruption and asked the CAA to conduct an independent review to establish the cause and ensure that air traffic control systems can get passengers to their destinations.
The disruption renewed scrutiny of NATS after its last shutdown in August 2023 caused travel chaos and cost airlines £100 million. There was also a radar-related technical issue in July 2025 that affected major airports, including Heathrow. Michael O'Leary, group CEO of Ryanair, told Reuters the latest outage was "an absolute rerun" of what happened in 2023, when a rogue flight plan caused the shutdown, and repeated his call for Rolfe to step down.
Economist and former Chief Economic Adviser to the government, Professor KV Subramanian said the West is unraveling in reference to the hours-long outage, which led to 2,000 cancellations and cost airlines millions of pounds in the UK. The economist was responding to a post by Milind Deora who spoke about his experience flying across Europe after the outage.
“I’ve long maintained (since the Global Financial Crisis to be precise) that the unraveling of the West has started. Mark my words: Future generations will ask why their great grandparents didn’t have the wisdom to see where the West was headed & chose to leave India to move there,” said Subramanian.
Deora said that his flight to London was diverted to Amsterdam due to the UK airport shutdown, after which they were stuck at Schipol for 18 hours but the luggage was not offloaded, and the Dutch transport strike put the trains out of operation. “We often complain about India, but our aviation infra & customer service are often better than the West,” said Deora.
While some users commended India’s airports, some pointed out that not everything is rosy. While one user said everything in India is better if one is from the privileged class, while another pointed out that the strike across the Netherlands was due to a demand for better pay, even when they are far better paid than their Indian counterparts.
UK AIRPORT OUTAGE
Flights resumed at major airports following an hours-long systems failure at Britain's NATS air traffic control provider on Tuesday. The breakdown led to about 2,000 cancellations over Tuesday and Wednesday, stranded hundreds of thousands of passengers and cost airlines millions of pounds. This marks the second major NATS failure in three years.
The government said NATS has one week to investigate the failure and report back, as pressure mounted on chief executive Martin Rolfe. Transport minister Heidi Alexander summoned Rolfe to explain what went wrong. A spokesperson for Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the government had confidence in Rolfe but had given him a week to report on the incident.
MUST READ | Heathrow ATC disruption hits India-UK connectivity, multiple flights affected
After meeting Rolfe, Alexander told parliament she did not believe the outage had been caused by a cyberattack but said, "I do not believe this issue was unavoidable." She also announced a separate independent review by the Civil Aviation Authority, which is due to report back in six months. She said passengers should not have to face this disruption and asked the CAA to conduct an independent review to establish the cause and ensure that air traffic control systems can get passengers to their destinations.
The disruption renewed scrutiny of NATS after its last shutdown in August 2023 caused travel chaos and cost airlines £100 million. There was also a radar-related technical issue in July 2025 that affected major airports, including Heathrow. Michael O'Leary, group CEO of Ryanair, told Reuters the latest outage was "an absolute rerun" of what happened in 2023, when a rogue flight plan caused the shutdown, and repeated his call for Rolfe to step down.