Fortunately, with a temperate climate, much of our weather in the UK tends to be fairly benign (this week’s snow a possible exception!) but one of the most common and disruptive forms is strong winds. Find out how exactly it affects air traffic control >>

On Thursday 21st September, Andy Shand took part in a discussion with Russell Akehurst from Leidos as part of a live broadcast about NATS Intelligent Approach suite of ATM tools. Here are the answers to some of the questions we received…

When we first introduced Time Based Separation for Heathrow arrivals back in 2015, we knew it was going to make a major difference to the airport’s resilience during strong headwinds, but the results in practice have surpassed our original expectations.

As we set a course for the new year, we thought it was a good time to reflect on our most popular web content for 2016; it gives us the chance to look again not just at the blog, but also our popular Discover features and the Drone Assist app.

Skies Above Britain TV show puts the spotlight on our air traffic controllers, but what it doesn’t show you is the army of very talented engineers whose job it is to make sure the technology our controllers rely on is in full working order.

We’re coming up to the first anniversary of Time Based Separation (TBS) entering operational service for Heathrow arrivals and I’m pleased to say it’s been a huge success.

As a British Airways pilot on the Airbus fleet based at Heathrow, I am all too familiar with the impact of strong headwinds on final approach into Heathrow. We know that TBS will not solve all strong wind delays but it will certainly reduce the length of our inbound slot delay.

The ongoing debate about airport capacity isn’t just about runways, it is also about resilience to challenging weather conditions. Heathrow is the busiest two runway airport in the world, handling over 470,000 flights a year.