NATS and Heathrow agree strategic partnership

NATS and Heathrow Airport have entered a new strategic partnership, signalling a fundamental change to the relationship between the airport and air traffic services provider. As part of the agreement, Heathrow and NATS will jointly create a long term business partnership with shared objectives aligned to what Heathrow is seeking to achieve over the coming years. More…

Controllers at Gatwick beat their own record

NATS’ air traffic controllers at Gatwick Airport handled a total of 913 flights on 24 July, breaking their own world record for air traffic movements in a single day from one runway. Three days later, the record was broken again at Gatwick, with NATS’ controllers handling a total of 926 movements on the 27th July. More…

XMAN trial continues to demonstrate benefits

The latest results from the final phase of the UK/Ireland FAB’s cross-border arrival management (XMAN) trial indicate the a significantly greater number of flights are now able to benefit from absorbing delay whilst in the en-route phase of flight. Overall, the total time absorbed by traffic inbound to Heathrow prior to entering the stacks has more than doubled compared with earlier phases of the trial, realising further fuel savings for customers and reduced CO2 emissions. The trial sees NATS working alongside our FAB partners the Irish Aviation Authority, FABEC (Brest, Maastricht and Reims Area Control Centres) and Heathrow Airport. More…

We can’t wait for another runway before acting on capacity

Last month the Airports Commission delivered its recommendation that a third runway should be built at Heathrow. The decision now lies with the Government, but the prospect of any new runway in the UK is still ten years away at the earliest. We can’t afford to wait that long to improve the resilience and capacity of our airspace and airports. Traffic levels are set to return to pre-2008 highs by 2020 so we have to act now to avoid spiralling delays and congestion. Our data visualisation ‘London 24’ depicts 24 hours in the South East of England showing how complex and busy the airspace currently is. To help address this there are four key activities that we’re progressing – either as lead or in close cooperation with others in the industry: Queue Management, Time Based Separation, Airport Capacity Management and Airspace Modernisation. More…

USA 24 – a data visualisation to share

Working in conjunction with FlightAware we’ve created a video showing air traffic patterns over the USA and highlighting the busiest airports. It’s been well received at the recent NATCA (National Air Traffic Controllers Association) Safety Conference in Las Vegas, and the IATA Ops Conference in Los Angeles which we attended so we’ve now made it available online so people can view it again at their leisure or download it to share with others. In the near future we will also be at the 60th ATCA Annual Conference and Exposition in Washington. If you are attending a US based event, which we are at, please come and say hello and take a look at some of our other visualisations and innovative technologies. More…

NATS wins Responsible Business Award

NATS was named winner of the Engaging Customers on Sustainability Award at Business in the Community’s 2015 Annual Responsible Business Gala. The Award recognises businesses that use their marketing activity to inspire and enable customers to live or operate in a more sustainable way. NATS’ award winning initiative, the Continuous Descent campaign was set up with Sustainable Aviation to reduce aircraft noise, cut CO2 emissions and help the aviation industry save money on fuel and reduce its environmental impact. More…

NATS to train Norwegian air traffic controllers

Norway’s brightest future air traffic controllers are to be trained in the UK from this September, after Air Traffic Management company NATS won a multi-year contract with the Norwegian air navigation services provider, Avinor. From September up to 28 student controllers will attend NATS’ specialist college in Hampshire for their initial training. More…