NATS Altitude NATS - UK air traffic control

The 6th June 2024 will mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day – the Allied invasion of Western Europe during the Second World War and one of the most pivotal days in human history.Most people will be familiar with the sight of the landings in Normandy, but fewer know the story beyond the beaches. D-Day itself saw an incredible 14,674 flights, all handled with nothing more than flare guns and signal lamps, paper and pencils, blackboard and chalk, rudimentary radio navigation and an enormous amount...

With such unique requirements, one of the most essential and complex users of our skies are the emergency services. In this month’s Altitude, we’re joined by pilots Captain Andrew Brandt from the National Police Air Service and Captain David Rolfe from London Air Ambulance Service to learn about their amazing life saving work and how collaboration is essential to keeping the ground and skies safe. You can also watch an on demand version of the livestream on our YouTube channel: http...

From delivering airspace modernisation and integrating drones through to understanding the impact of AI and the ever pressing need to address aviation’s climate impact, the list of priorities for leaders in air traffic management is a long and complex one. Our industry is in the midst of a period of unprecedented change and that’s in addition to delivering the safe and resilient service people rightly expect every day. In this month’s Altitude, we invite Martin Rolfe, CEO of NATS, a...

Ice, snow, howling winds and temperatures as low as minus 30.C are hardly ideal conditions to be running an international airport, but that’s the reality for the team at Rovaniemi, Finland’s second busiest airport. In beautiful Lapland, sitting on the edge of the Arctic Circle, the near constant need to clear runways and de-ice aircraft should conspire against delivering a smooth operation, but the weather hasn’t closed Rovaniemi in over seven years. Attracting record passenger numb...

Human Factors is the understanding of ‘the human in the loop’. It’s about how people behave and interact both with technology and each other, and it’s something that has become fundamental to safety across aviation and a host of other industries.But what really is Human Factors? Where did it come from and why is it become so integral? In this month’s Altitude, we’ll be digging into the history, the practical applications and the challenges posed by the rise of things like AI and automation.&n...

For more than 25 years, Concorde was the world's only successful supersonic airliner. Flying faster than the rotation of the earth, it could cross the Atlantic in just two and a half hours, with passengers arriving at JFK before they left Heathrow.Now, 20 years after its final ever flight from Heathrow to Filton on 26 November 2003, we look back at the history of one of aviation’s great engineering and technical marvels. There is no one better to help us do that than our very special gue...