The Bristol Balloon Fiesta is now in its 37th year and its close proximity to Bristol Airport means we have to carefully plan for the occasion to ensure there is minimal impact to normal airport operations.

We created a data visualisation to play at US events – USA 24. This is similar to our award-winning Europe 24 and UK 24 – this time showing air traffic patterns over the USA and highlighting the busiest airports.

The CEOs of five of Europe’s largest airlines have recently come together to lobby the European Commission for reforms. One of the calls made by the CEOs was for the Commission to address the slow pace on delivering the Single European Sky.

Friday 24th July was expected to be the busiest day of the year. Rather than just looking at statistics for the day we thought it would be interesting to put some faces to those who flew on #FlyFriday.

Last weekend saw the Royal International Air Tattoo, or ‘RIAT’, celebrate air power from around the world and the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, with a stunning three day airshow.

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 I represented NATS graduates at the BIG Bang STEM event for the South East, which drew crowds of around 7,000 young people aged nine to 19 years old.

For decades precision guidance for aircraft approaches have been largely one size fits all, with an Instrument Landing System (ILS) providing a single approach path to follow, but that seems set to change.

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.