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.

In celebration of Women in Aviation Week, Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day, we’ve been speaking to some of the fantastic women who work at NATS and finding out exactly how and why they ended up working in the wonderful world of aviation.

There were nine go-arounds in a row at one point at Heathrow, and 40 in total between 07:00 and 14:00, when usually we might see one a day. Add in similar problems at other airports and you’re suddenly dealing with a very complex, dynamic and challenging environment. 

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.

Portsmouth has a long and proud military history.  It’s a near neighbour of some of NATS’ main sites, notably our Swanwick Centre which is still unique in the world in having military and civil ATC working alongside each other.  Many of our colleagues are part of the Armed Forces community, from Veterans to Reservists to […]

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.