With applications still open, National Apprenticeship Week seems like a perfect time for me to remind would-be candidates to make sure they apply for the NATS engineering apprenticeship in plenty of time

This is the third annual World ATM Congress trade show and we’re looking forward to welcoming delegates onto our stand to talk with our team and watch a range of technical demonstrations, as well as participate in more light hearted activities in the form of refreshments and games.

Industry events provide a useful opportunity for organisations to promote their wares and for individuals to reinforce relationships and grow their network of contacts. NATS will be exhibiting at the CANSO World ATM Congress at the IFEMA complex in Madrid from 10 – 12 March.

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.

From today, NATS is introducing Direct Route Airspace into Prestwick’s Rathlin and Central upper airspace sectors.

This is a real landmark which will lay our foundations for the eventual adoption of Free Route Airspace across the whole of Northern Europe

At Heathrow we have a great relationship with London’s Air Ambulance team at the Royal London Hospital. I was recently asked to speak at a human factors symposium organised by London’s Air Ambulance Institute of Pre-Hospital Care at the Queen Mary University of London’s Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry.

The ferroNATS project encompassed a series of safe and seamless transitions from one ATC provider to another, and also the recruitment and training of new air traffic controllers, creation of new safety cases for each airfield and the implementation of NATS’ renowned Just Culture for safety reporting.

Now that FerroNATS is firmly established as a trusted air traffic services provider in Spain we take a look at the project, its challenges and its benefits in a new interactive feature.

From the pioneering actions of Alcock and Brown to today’s high capability avionics and air traffic management systems, we see massive change as well as the roots of the next generation emerging. A change that will see the strengthening of the position of the Prestwick Air Traffic Control Centre as the transatlantic gateway, delivering the 2025 vision today, and in partnership with our global industry colleagues.

You will have hopefully seen today’s news that NATS has started a trial promoting the use of ADS-B by General Aviation that encourages pilots to connect a transponder to a non-certified GPS source.

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.