All kinds of aircraft travel through UK airspace – from huge commercial planes to small helicopters – all of which have to be carefully integrated and managed. This is particularly true of the busy skies over London, which has a skyline that continues to grow outwards and upwards.

Last week the Airports Commission announced its recommendation for a new runway in the south east of England, but even with a swift and decisive verdict the prospect of any new runway in the UK is still ten years away.

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.

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.

The UK is one of the few countries around the world with a joint and integrated civil and military air traffic control service, with NATS and MoD controllers sitting side by side in the control centre at Swanwick, Hampshire.

This close relationship allows greater cooperation and the more flexible use of airspace. But what is the difference between civil and military ATM and how do they work together on a day to day basis?

The aviation community has long argued that having the highest flight tax in the world makes the UK less competitive than our European counterparts. We are likely to see changes in demand as a result of further APD reform.

As most UK General Aviation (GA) pilots must have noticed, the world is going through a period of rapid change. Technologies that have been common place for decades will soon be superseded – and that includes a reduction in the number of ground based VOR beacons in the UK.

You might not think pirates are much of a problem for the world of aviation, so it may surprise you to know that at NATS we have a specialist undercover team whose job it is to track them down.

As the 68th Cannes Film Festival got under way last week, huge numbers of people took to the skies to ensure they were able to travel there in style.

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).