In my view, far from just being just “the people in the tower”, air traffic control is at the heart of an airport. It can help set the tone for the entire operation and can make an airport either poor or excellent.

Last weekend is normally one of our busiest at Manchester so when we were asked to fit an airshow in around the normal commercial aircraft we knew it would be a challenge.

I had the pleasure of paying a behind the scenes visit to Heathrow’s new Terminal 2 on Tuesday. I was there as part of a day organised by the airport to show some invited journalists, bloggers and spotters Heathrow’s inner workings, including NATS’ role in the control tower.

We’ve been able to measure the environmental efficiency of the aircraft in our skies for some time now, but until now we haven’t been able to extend that knowledge to planes operating on the ground at airports.

An airport is an airport, right? Wrong! Every airport has its own idiosyncrasies, foibles and operational challenges. As such, we’ve compiled a top list of what we hope are interesting titbits and trivia on the airports that NATS operates from in the UK and Gibraltar.