With the world’s busiest two runways, the Heathrow Airport control tower is a busy place, with the NATS controllers responsible for safely guiding 1,350 aircraft movements every day.

This month Heathrow announced a new early morning arrival slot. Heathrow slots are famously rare so given it is already the busiest two-runway airport in the world, how did space for a new slot emerge? The answer lies in Big Data.

The Heathrow skyline changed forever at the end of November, when one of its most iconic features – the orange and white radar next to Terminal 1 – was removed.

Over the past few years more and more effort has gone into reducing the impact that aviation has on the environment. But, even if we were able to drastically cut carbon emission tomorrow some impact from climate change is now inevitable and we need to be prepared.

Following the success of our two data visualisations – Europe 24 and North Atlantic Skies – we’ve taken a lot of time to think about where to go next. We are therefore very excited to publish UK 24 – your guided tour to some of what makes UK aviation work.

The focal point for Remembrance Sunday is the two minutes of silence at 11am and as such it’s hugely important that the time is kept as quiet as possible. Each year at NATS we play our part in making it so.

Our trials of a new X Band radar to mitigate the effects of wind turbines at airports have understandably excited the airport community. A debate has sparked up between different members of the industry, including a few questions that I want to take this opportunity to answer.

We spoke to Yaquob Al Mahruqi, an aviation systems engineer, about his time in the UK and what difference his new ‘Air Traffic Safety Electronic Personnel’ qualification will mean for him.

UK airports already excel at single runway operations – but is it possible to get even better? NATS, in conjunction with SESAR, has been running a simulation to find out whether linked planning tools can help.

FerroNATS took over the running of Ibiza back in November 2013, meaning this was our first summer operating ATC at the airport and I’m delighted to say that, despite an increase in traffic, punctuality improved during our first summer.