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.

One of the most important ways in which NATS seeks to help reduce the environmental impact of aviation is through the Single European Sky ATM Research programme (SESAR). SESAR brings together stakeholders from across the European aviation industry to help develop and deploy new technologies and procedures that can improve the performance of European air traffic management (ATM).

One of the SESAR projects we have led, called TOPFLIGHT, has now been long-listed for a World Responsible Tourism Award in the Best Aviation Programme for Carbon Reduction category.

Aviation Noise is by far the most emotive topic around airport expansion, where battle lines are drawn in the form of noise contours, and entrenched positions on Government policy and residents’ rights to peace and quiet have resulted in a stalemate.

During 2013 we enabled savings of 59,000 tonnes of fuel, thereby avoiding 190,000 tonnes of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere. It was our best ever year ever in terms of savings.

How modern aircraft navigation technology can provide respite from noise for those living under airport flight paths.

Since the London Airspace Consultation went live on 15 October 2013, a number of points have been raised from members of the public and interested stakeholders, which we thought we could clarify here, as well as in the FAQ section of the consultation website.

Recent changes to how we use UK airspace have enabled our airline customers to save an extra 8,000 tonnes of fuel every year. This means 13,000 tonnes of fuel savings have been enabled since April, worth £8.5m to airlines and the equivalent to 41,000 tonnes of CO2.

Our Chief Executive, Richard Deakin, gave a speech at the Airport Operators Association annual conference. It was a wide ranging speech, taking in market contestability, airport capacity, regulation, Europe and the environment, so we thought it was worth reproducing here in full.

The growth of wind energy in the UK has created an increasing challenge for aviation and air traffic control in particular.

Last week I took part in a panel discussion on the use of technology in aviation to drive sustainability at Air Transport World’s Eco-Aviation Conference in Washington DC.

It was striking that at a conference wholly about the environment and aviation, NATS was the only ANSP represented, yet the topic of air traffic management (ATM) was seemingly on everyone’s lips.