Hong Kong took a big step back to normality last week with the lifting of its strict hotel quarantine measures. The challenge now is how to rebuild in a safe, considered and sustainable way.

It is now a scientific certainty that the impact of contrails and contrail-induced cirrus clouds, despite their relatively short lifetime, have at least an equivalent impact on the climate as CO2 emissions, and potentially up to twice that. What can we do about it?

The NATS Analytics team – with backgrounds ranging from data science, mathematics and statistics to aeronautical engineering and air traffic control – was instrumental in producing the safety assessment that supported new oceanic global separation reductions and calculated the significant safety benefits due to the frequent and accurate positional updates.

Back in 2019, we announced that we were working in partnership with Leidos and Canadian air traffic service provider, NAV CANADA, to deliver our Intelligent Approach tool for Toronto Pearson International Airport. But delivering a big project like this is never entirely straightforward and doing it during a global pandemic is even less so.

New technologies provide a huge amount of data – how we use that data is part of several European-wide SESAR 2020 projects in which NATS has been involved. In particular, the projects have been exploring how enhanced communications between aircraft and air traffic controllers (ATCOs) could enable environmental, safety, efficiency and cost benefits for the aviation industry.

Giving an engineer a RADAR to train on is akin to giving a real-life Ferrari to a Scalextric fan.  That’s what NATS Training Services did for Liverpool and Doncaster engineers. When the airports asked if we could provide a representative RADAR for the training course, the answer was a resounding yes. 

While there are acute differences between our oceanic and domestic operations, there is a great deal we can learn from one to build on the other.

You’re on the flight deck, sitting on stand and ready to start engines. You call to the tower to request permission to depart, but what if the clearance you get back doesn’t come from a human air traffic controller, but a computer?

The latest forecasts suggest Europe’s summer traffic levels will be close to 85% of what we saw before the pandemic, with flight numbers even exceeding pre-Covid levels at certain times and in certain places.

Last week, we were celebrating Learning at Work Week 2022, the national event run by the Campaign for Learning.