Every day, Heathrow Airport operates at over 98% capacity, a phenomenal achievement that drives the controllers in the tower to deliver the best service every minute of every day.

For NATS optimisation is about helping airlines, airport operators and other air navigation service providers to reach their full capability and get the best from their existing resources, assets and infrastructure.

NATS air traffic control towers liaise with centres at Swanwick and Prestwick – but the NATS team at Gibraltar have a very different “partner” centre.

As one of the main London airports, Luton has a steady departing and arriving flow of commuter and holiday traffic as would be expected. What is less well known is the scale of the business aviation operation at Luton – which accounts for almost 30 per cent of the total air traffic movements each year.

Not many people get the chance to work in an iconic building that is so striking on the skyline that it has become a part of a city’s identity. But that’s the case for air traffic controllers, engineers and support staff who are based at the NATS operation in Edinburgh.

NATS experienced a difficult end to 2013 following the technical problem at Swanwick that saw a loss of 10% in airspace capacity for a few hours. But, with the start of a new year comes the chance to refocus on moving forward with the positive agenda that we’ve been able to pursue over recent years.

The 2014 Commonwealth Games will see thousands of athletes and spectators flocking to Glasgow for the festival of sport – with many of them arriving by air into one of the UK’s busiest airports.

We now operate in more than 30 countries around the world. That includes providing air traffic control services at 15 airports in the UK. We’ve decided to shine a spotlight on those domestic operations and over the next few months we will be bringing you a profile of each of our UK operations. We start today with Stansted.

NATS is hosting the CANSO Global ATM Safety Conference this week. We caught up with Jeff Poole, Director General of CANSO to hear his thoughts on why this event is so important and what he hopes it will help deliver.

Next week NATS is hosting the CANSO Global ATM Safety Conference, bringing together the world’s top experts in ATM safety to share, develop and challenge our safety initiatives and strategies.