Keep the little ones occupied during half term with our egg-cellent Easter activity pack.

The 23 March marks World Meteorological Day, commemorating the coming into force of the Convention establishing the World Meteorological Organization in 1950. Read about the MET Office team that work alongside our operation and the work they do to ensure that safe and efficient operational decisions can be made.

Following on from British Science Week, when we celebrated the role that science, technology, engineering, and maths play in air traffic control, I want to share some of the ways we’re trying to inspire the next generation.

There was no fanfare or fireworks, but last Tuesday was a significant day in the history of transatlantic air travel. For the first time in decades there were no westbound tracks across the North Atlantic.

It was the Roman philosopher and naturalist Pliny the Elder who said the only certainty is that nothing is certain.  He would never know how many times he’d be quoted over the centuries, and it’s a truth we are grappling with right now as we try to plan our way out of the pandemic. 

Today marks International Women’s Day and the start of British Science Week, two national celebrations which mean a lot to our business. We’ve been speaking to some of our female employees and advocates for STEM. Meet Dr Sarah Ewer…

The world is a very different place than it was 10 months ago. The demands on us as an ANSP and the support our airport customers need are totally unlike what we were dealing with this time last year. Covid has forced us all to adapt and in doing so we’ve learnt some valuable lessons.

These may be uncertain times, but one thing we know for sure is that flying in the future will look very different from the past. Flying taxis, all-electric aircraft, drone deliveries, even commercial space travel… they are not so far away. That Sixties world of The Jetsons is now knocking at our door! We are already planning to modernise the UK’s airspace and enable access for new types of aircraft, which also means changing the way we manage the airspace.

With airports so badly hit by the impact of the Covid crisis, being able to maximise the value and efficiency of existing assets – especially runways – is going to be of critical importance over the coming years as we begin to see traffic return.

The dramatic fall in traffic we’ve seen across the Atlantic has given us a window of opportunity to do things differently, and to introduce things more quickly than otherwise might have been possible. So, we’re going to disband the Organised Track Structure on days where we don’t believe they are necessary.