A good proportion of us will take to the skies over the next few months to reach our holiday destinations and will expect the flight to and from your paradise to be without drama.

In the world of air traffic control, we have that same desire and work particularly hard to realise that expectation, even with growing air traffic levels and increased demand.

GPS is widely used in the transport industry, most obviously by the sat-navs in our cars, but largely due to current levels of signal accuracy and integrity being too low, we’re yet to maximise its use in the aviation industry. This is starting to change, however, with the ongoing development of the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS).

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.

What do aviation and elite sports have in common?

‘If Nike ran air traffic control, what would it look like’, explains how NATS uses techniques associated with elite sports to help its people keep the skies safe. This was the basis of a recent speech delivered at the annual Leaders Sport Performance in London, with the likes of Arsenal FC manager Arsene Wenger and former England cricket coach Andy Flower as fellow keynote speakers.

Martin Clifford, easyJet Base Captain at Bristol, as guest blogger, shares his thoughts about Continuous Descent Operations (CDO), which involves teamwork between the Tower, the Airport and easyJet.

How does Southampton air traffic tower cope with traffic peaks when it seems like half of the UK wants to fly on the same weekend?

Every day, Heathrow Airport operates at over 98% capacity, a phenomenal achievement that drives the controllers in the tower to deliver the best service every minute of every day.

When people hear that my role in NATS is to lead the Survey and Drawing Services (S&DS) team they often think I sit at a desk drawing things every day. But in truth, what the team and I do is much more varied and exciting.

Last week the Secretary of State for Transport addressed an industry lunch, sitting in the audience I was proud when I heard him say ‘the teams that manage and operate the airspace system do a phenomenal job’.

For NATS optimisation is about helping airlines, airport operators and other air navigation service providers to reach their full capability and get the best from their existing resources, assets and infrastructure.