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.

NATS and Heathrow Airport are delighted to announce the winner of the plane spotter photo competition, as voted for by you, is…

Earlier in the week Heathrow hosted a group of spotters for a day going behind the scenes at the airport, including a look around the fantastic new Terminal 2. As part of the day, NATS and Heathrow asked the spotters to submit their best photos for a competition where you get to decide the winners.

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.

Huge growth in air travel across Indonesia is driving massive plans to build and relocate a total of 45 airports over the next decade. Business Development Manager, Nick Jackson, will be discussing the challenges and opportunities this brings at the 2nd annual South East Asia Airport Expansion Summit in Jakarta.

One of the key challenges facing aviation today is that the speed of realising new airport developments – whether that’s new runways or terminals – is being outpaced by airline demand. That’s why managing and maximising airport and airspace efficiency has become so important.

NATS had been working with Heathrow, BA and community group HACAN on a noise respite trial for people living under the airport flight paths. Today, the results have been published and they make for interesting reading.

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.

With less than a year to go to the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games and planning well under way, we’ve been reflecting on the work we were doing this time last year at the London 2012 Olympics.