The Covid pandemic had a huge impact on aviation. Almost overnight the volume of traffic in the UK dropped hugely, by up to 90%. But this also provided an unexpected opportunity to see how we could use the UK’s airspace more efficiently.

Increasingly, its technology that is allowing airports to unlock the next level of capability and performance, something that will be increasingly important for the Greater Bay Area as the Chinese government aims to grow the region into a world-leading transportation hub.

From 1 March, anyone flying at Flight Level 330 and below will be able to do so entirely free from of the OTS structure. This change means anyone operating at those levels will have the flexibility to file a random route plan and choose the trajectory that suits them.

As part of our journey to embracing the diversity of our colleagues, NATS has recently signed up to Business in the Community’s (BITC) Race at Work Charter. This requires a commitment to improve the equality of opportunity in our workplace by delivering against seven key actions which we hope will improve our approach to D&I at NATS.

As climate change continues to make its presence felt, and events like Storm Arwen become more regular and severe, we need to embed climate resilience into our facilities and operations.

We talk often about airspace modernisation and how it’s progressing, but we haven’t talked before about how we prepare our controllers for a new airspace design. 

I’m finding in conversations with airport operations directors around the world, is that they’re looking at ways to enable future growth, but in a way that reflects our current reality.

Monitoring the performance of our air traffic controllers is an incredibly important part of the work we do to keep our skies safe. In May, we launched the NATS Management of Competence System (or NMOCS), a single evidence-based system which is transforming the way we manage the competence of our controllers. Find out more.

With airports so impacted by the Covid crisis, tools like Intelligent Approach that help airports utilise runways and airspace more efficiently, for a fraction of the investment needed for new ground-based infrastructure, will be more valuable than ever to operators as traffic returns.

When faced with an opportunity to upskill in programming languages earlier this year, NATS’ Analytics team thought outside the box. Rather than go on a traditional training course, they looked into their own skills and created an alternative in-house training experience.  Rhona Murphy, Analytics Core Team Lead, tells us more…