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

Time at Bletchley, whether as a resident apprentice or a course attendee, is considered to be a formative time in an engineer’s life.

NATS College of Telecommunications Engineering not only trained apprentices, but also provided continuing professional development for existing staff and other companies or countries wishing to take advantage of the comprehensive technical facilities.

A new NATS exhibition space in the National Museum of Computing will open in April 2015.

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.

Take a trip down memory lane and read all about the colourful history of Prestwick Control Centre with this amazing timeline, which details the most significant milestones from 1939 to the present day, featuring some mesmerising photographs.

With the world’s busiest two runways, the Heathrow Airport control tower is a busy place, with the NATS controllers responsible for safely guiding 1,350 aircraft movements every day.

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.