At NATS we strive to be environmentally efficient in our operational and corporate work and support the community through charity and voluntary work.

Continuous Descents Operations (CDOs) mitigate noise by keeping aircraft higher for longer. They can offer noise reductions of between 1 to 5 decibels per aircraft on the approach from between 25 to around 10 miles to touchdown.

From sports such as Formula 1 using real-time data to analyse performance and devise strategy through to retail and loyalty cards using big data sets to provide better experiences and offers for their customers, getting your hands on good data and using it effectively is at the heart of many of today’s industries. Real-time big data is on its way to ATM and the sooner we can make it happen, the better.

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

A good proportion of us will take to the skies over the next few months to reach our holiday destinations and will expect the flight to and from your paradise to be without drama.

In the world of air traffic control, we have that same desire and work particularly hard to realise that expectation, even with growing air traffic levels and increased demand.

GPS is widely used in the transport industry, most obviously by the sat-navs in our cars, but largely due to current levels of signal accuracy and integrity being too low, we’re yet to maximise its use in the aviation industry. This is starting to change, however, with the ongoing development of the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS).

We’ll be featuring ACM on our NATS Stand and I will be giving technical demonstrations on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. If you’re attending the Congress and are interested in ACM, please do come along and I’d be very happy to tell you more.

What do aviation and elite sports have in common?

‘If Nike ran air traffic control, what would it look like’, explains how NATS uses techniques associated with elite sports to help its people keep the skies safe. This was the basis of a recent speech delivered at the annual Leaders Sport Performance in London, with the likes of Arsenal FC manager Arsene Wenger and former England cricket coach Andy Flower as fellow keynote speakers.

Martin Clifford, easyJet Base Captain at Bristol, as guest blogger, shares his thoughts about Continuous Descent Operations (CDO), which involves teamwork between the Tower, the Airport and easyJet.

How does Southampton air traffic tower cope with traffic peaks when it seems like half of the UK wants to fly on the same weekend?