I had the pleasure of paying a behind the scenes visit to Heathrow’s new Terminal 2 on Tuesday. I was there as part of a day organised by the airport to show some invited journalists, bloggers and spotters Heathrow’s inner workings, including NATS’ role in the control tower.

NATS had been working with Heathrow, BA and community group HACAN on a noise respite trial for people living under the airport flight paths. Today, the results have been published and they make for interesting reading.

With less than a year to go to the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games and planning well under way, we’ve been reflecting on the work we were doing this time last year at the London 2012 Olympics.

One of the main things occupying the minds of those involved in providing air traffic services is how we reduce costs for airlines whilst improving safety and reducing emissions. Adrian Clark is one of our experts who forms part of the SESAR team looking into how to do this in Terminal Operations.

If you’ve seen Airport Live over the last few nights, you’ve probably seen Dave Marshall, Head of Training, talking about air traffic control. So how did Dave get into Air Traffic Control? We caught up with him to find out.

If you saw Airport Live last night, you’d have seen Ady Dolan controlling aircraft at London Heathrow. So how did Ady get into Air Traffic Control? We caught up with him to find out.

The first episode of Airport Live aired last night and a number of NATS people featured, including Steph Kelly. We caught up with Steph to talk about being a Heathrow controller and featuring in the BBC 2 show.

Most, if not all of us who have flown into London Heathrow will have experienced their aircraft being ‘held’ – circling on the outskirts of the airport – before being given clearance to land. So why does it happen – and is it necessary?

We’ve been delving through the archives and uncovered some great old photographs of air traffic control at Heathrow in the 1940s and 50s. We thought you might like to see them.

Jon Proudlove reckons his “office” has the best view from its windows of anywhere in the UK – and it would be hard to disagree. Why? Because Jon is the General Manager of Air Traffic Control at Heathrow Airport.