At Prestwick the FISOs record a fair amount of information on our handwritten FIR strips. We try to note down on the flight strip all the relevant information on the first call with an aircraft.

Last weekend saw the Royal International Air Tattoo, or ‘RIAT’, celebrate air power from around the world and the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, with a stunning three day airshow.

An ‘invisible infrastructure’, with ‘huge motorways in the sky’. When NATS released its UK 24 video, it showed just how many flights are up in that invisible infrastructure on a daily basis.

Smarter and more collaborative working is the best way to be efficient and ensure we can be sustainable as an industry.

“Mayday! Mayday!”

This is a term that has become indoctrinated in our society – even by those outside of the aviation industry.

The average passenger on board any one of the 5000 plus flights through UK airspace every day is likely to be aware of Air Traffic Controllers (ATCOs) sat in the control tower at their airport, ensuring a safe and efficient arrival or departure.

However, many people simply aren’t aware of the controllers who make sure that aircraft get to their destination through the airspace in-between airports – either just in the UK or connecting a flight between different countries airspace – that’s the job of the area controller.

The ferroNATS project encompassed a series of safe and seamless transitions from one ATC provider to another, and also the recruitment and training of new air traffic controllers, creation of new safety cases for each airfield and the implementation of NATS’ renowned Just Culture for safety reporting.

Now that FerroNATS is firmly established as a trusted air traffic services provider in Spain we take a look at the project, its challenges and its benefits in a new interactive feature.

There is one group of people that are often over looked when thinking about those working during the festive season; that of air traffic controllers.

Regular readers of our blog will have noticed our post on our new ATC games to see if you have what it takes to be a controller. Maybe you have had a go already! We decided to take the games to Parliament to test the skills of our elected representatives, and see if they had perhaps chosen the wrong career!

Find out in this video what it’s really like to train and work as an air traffic controller, and what one of our controllers likes best about her job.