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.

An ‘invisible infrastructure’, with ‘huge motorways in the sky’. When NATS released its UK 24 video, it showed just how many flights are up in that invisible infrastructure on a daily basis.

Smarter and more collaborative working is the best way to be efficient and ensure we can be sustainable as an industry.

The UK is one of the few countries around the world with a joint and integrated civil and military air traffic control service, with NATS and MoD controllers sitting side by side in the control centre at Swanwick, Hampshire.

This close relationship allows greater cooperation and the more flexible use of airspace. But what is the difference between civil and military ATM and how do they work together on a day to day basis?

In 2011 the Spanish government decided that the time had come to open the national air traffic control sector up to competition in search of efficiency gains. New beginnings are always hard.

Now that more than 35 million passengers have passed through the airports whose air traffic is controlled by FerroNATS, and with management of over 500,000 flights under our belt, we barely have the time to look back and remember how it all started. But there was a beginning and getting from there to here required a lot of hard work. This blog looks back at the journey.

Automation has a major role to play in the future of air traffic management. People are key to the success of any automation; how they design, monitor and maintain the systems and tools available to controllers, and how those tools are used. It’s something we’re dedicating a lot of attention to and I was pleased to be invited to discuss this at a recent Flight Safety Foundation Forum in Brussels.

Safety is always a key consideration and Aberdeen has supported the adoption of Wide Area Multilateration technology, which uses signals from transmitters and receivers fitted to oil and gas platforms to track offshore flights.

Hear what John Millar, NATS’ General Manager at Aberdeen Airport, has to say about the service his team provides to both fixed wing aircraft and the numerous helicopters in the latest Tower Tour video.

You might not think pirates are much of a problem for the world of aviation, so it may surprise you to know that at NATS we have a specialist undercover team whose job it is to track them down.

As the 68th Cannes Film Festival got under way last week, huge numbers of people took to the skies to ensure they were able to travel there in style.