100th anniversary of first control tower marks birth of air traffic control
Summary
Finding a way of safely organising growing levels of traffic saw the UK Air Ministry commission a new building at Croydon Airport, to be ‘erected 15 feet above ground level’ and with ‘large windows to be placed on all four walls’. Juliet Kennedy, NATS operations director, said: “We’ve come a long way since the first controllers in terms of the amount of traffic we handle and the tools we use, but the motivation to harness the latest technology to help make flying safer and more efficient remains at the absolute heart of what we do.” In 2019 NATS introduced real-time satellite tracking to improve the safety and environmental performance of flights over the North Atlantic, while at Heathrow it is researching the use of Artificial Intelligence to cut weather-related delays at airports. Juliet continues: “We have a £1bn investment programme, but technology alone is not the answer if we’re going to both keep pace with the growing demand to fly and meet the huge challenge of climate change. NATS is playing a leading role in cross-industry plans to modernise the country’s airspace over the next five years, something that will allow aircraft to fly higher for longer, get more direct routings and enable more continuous descent approaches, something that both reduces fuel burn and emissions. Juliet concludes: “The early pioneers of the 1920s laid down the foundations that allowed aviation to flourish in the 20th Century and enrich the lives of countless people around the world.
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