Win a chance to try your hand at air traffic control in our state-of-the-art 360 degree Heathrow simulator.

I went to Westminster last night with the CEO of Heathrow to meet a group of MPs to discuss what their constituents are telling them is more flights and more noise over their homes.

Heathrow is 70 today and to celebrate, we’ve delved into the archive to find some of our best photos of the airport though the decades.

Continuous Descents Operations (CDOs) mitigate noise by keeping aircraft higher for longer. They can offer noise reductions of between 1 to 5 decibels per aircraft on the approach from between 25 to around 10 miles to touchdown.

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.

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.

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.

This month Heathrow announced a new early morning arrival slot. Heathrow slots are famously rare so given it is already the busiest two-runway airport in the world, how did space for a new slot emerge? The answer lies in Big Data.

The Heathrow skyline changed forever at the end of November, when one of its most iconic features – the orange and white radar next to Terminal 1 – was removed.

The focal point for Remembrance Sunday is the two minutes of silence at 11am and as such it’s hugely important that the time is kept as quiet as possible. Each year at NATS we play our part in making it so.