As Air Traffic Management (ATM) becomes ever-busier, more complex and more inter-connected across different Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs), it is timely to consider how human performance is best optimised for smooth, efficient and safe handling of air traffic.

Human performance is especially important in ATM as it is a 24/7 industry which strongly depends on people. Aviation needs its frontline staff to be on top performance in order to maintain the safety and efficiency of the air transport system.

Every year the International Air Transport Association (IATA) brings its members together for an Operations Conference. This year the conference was in Los Angeles and focused on the challenge and opportunity from introducing new technology to enhance safety, efficiency and capacity.

Hosting major international sporting events presents both challenges and opportunities, with the invisible infrastructure above our heads playing an integral role in the planning process.

NATS was recently awarded a contract to work with the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) on air traffic management, specifically looking at airport expansion plans, high intensity operations and third runway activity.

So we thought it a good and timely opportunity to share a data visualisation we had made for the Asia Pacific region, offering some insight into just how busy the skies of the region are on any given day.

Sometimes it takes a terrible tragedy to galvanise our understandably conservative industry into taking bold steps, but our response must be measured as well as meaningful.

Today marks five years since Europe’s skies were plunged into an eerie quiet following the eruption of the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull.

No two days are the same for the ATCOs and other staff at Heathrow tower. The main challenge is to make sure that all these flights arrive and depart safely and on time. It’s a demanding job, so much so that it can take up to three years to ‘go solo’ as a Heathrow controller.

We spend a lot of time talking about what air traffic control (ATC) is and explaining how it works, but what about the many myths that are out there about ATC?

Films such as Pushing Tin do nothing to help separate fact from fiction so we’ve attempted to do just that right here and tackle eight of the most common misconceptions about ATC, airspace and controllers. Let us know if you believed any of these falsities or have any others that aren’t included here.

We are at the dawn of a third age of air traffic management, a world of airspace systemisation. It means that aircraft will again be separated procedurally, only this time based on technologies unimaginable to those pioneering pilots and controllers of the ‘40s and ‘50s.

The AMS-UK upgrade has gone live; but how does this messaging system shape communication in the aviation industry?