NATS Holdings

Last updated

NATS Holdings Limited
Company type Public-private partnership
Industry Air travel and airports
GenreInformation Services
PredecessorNATCS
Founded1962 (1962)
Headquarters Whiteley, England, United Kingdom
Number of locations
 London Area Control Centre and London Terminal Control Centre at Swanwick, Area Control at Prestwick, and air traffic control services at UK airports, as well as offices in Dubai and Singapore
Area served
UK and Gibraltar airspace
Key people
Martin Rolfe (chief executive officer)
ServicesInternational air traffic services and consultancy
Number of employees
4,227 (2021) [1]
Parent Civil Aviation Authority (49%) [2]
Subsidiaries NATS En-Route PLC
NATS Services Ltd
Website www.nats.aero OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

NATS Holdings, formerly National Air Traffic Services and commonly referred to as NATS, provides en-route air traffic control services to flights within the UK flight information regions and the Shanwick Oceanic Control Area. [3] It also provides air traffic control services to 14 UK airports.

Contents

The company's en-route business is regulated and operated under licence from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). [4]

History

The organisation was originally set up as the National Air Traffic Control Services (NATCS) in 1962, bringing together responsibility for the UK's existing military and civil air traffic control services.[ citation needed ]

The organisation became National Air Traffic Services (NATS) when the responsibility for sponsoring the civil air traffic service component was transferred to the newly formed Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in 1972. Before this it had no legal existence – all contracts were with the CAA or MoD.[ citation needed ]

Until its establishment as a separate company, the leadership of NATS (the "Controller") alternated between civil and military, the latter normally a serving air marshal. The first controller was Sir Laurence Sinclair, exceptionally a retired air vice marshal. NATS staff were drawn from and paid by, the CAA and the MoD.[ citation needed ]

In 1992 it was recognised by the Government that as a service provider, NATS should be operated at some distance from its regulator, the CAA. Although debated, it was decided that NATS should not be privatised at that time. NATS was re-organised into a limited company on 1 April 1996 [5] and became a wholly owned subsidiary of the CAA. [6] The direct involvement of military officers in the management of NATS ended at this time, although the last military Controller, Air Marshal Sir Thomas Stonor, KCB, had retired in 1991.

In 1998, a public-private partnership was proposed. This was written into the Transport Act 2000 and in 2001 51% of NATS was transferred to the private sector. However, due to the decline in air traffic following the September 11, 2001 attacks £130m of additional investment was required, £65m coming each from the UK government and BAA, which received 4% of the company in return. [7]

As a public-private partnership the UK government holds 49% and a golden share, with 42% held by the Airline Group, 5% by NATS staff, and 4% by UK airport operator LHR Airports Ltd. [8] [2]

Structure

The workforce of NATS includes air traffic controllers (ATCOs), air traffic control engineers (ATCEs), air traffic services assistants (ATSAs) and science technical analytical and research staff (STARs). Administrative and support staff make up the remainder of the 4,200 or so employees of NATS. Martin Rolfe became CEO of NATS in May 2015.

NATS is split into two main service provision companies: NATS En-Route PLC (NERL) and NATS Services Ltd (NSL).

Operations

In 2019 NATS handled 2.54m flights. [9]

En-route control centres

There are two control locations in the UK operated by NERL:

Various radar stations are operated around the UK, one such being that on Great Dun Fell in Cumbria.

Airport services

The airports service line provides air traffic services at 16 UK airports: [10]

Heathrow Airport ATC tower Heathrow Traffic Control Tower - geograph.org.uk - 144749.jpg
Heathrow Airport ATC tower

NATS has also won contracts to provide air traffic control engineering services at certain airports including:

NATS also provides services to the Ministry of Defence (MoD), via Qinetiq, for air traffic and range air control services at a number of UK ranges, including:

NATS also provides services to the MoD's Military Aviation Authority.

Aberdeen NSL provides air traffic services on behalf of NERL to offshore helicopters operating primarily from Aberdeen, Shetland (Sumburgh), Humberside Airport, Norwich Airport and North Denes.

Defence

NATS helps the military around the world share airspace with civil aviation for commercial, political and environmental reasons. Services NATS provides include:

Aquila

Aquila is a joint venture between NATS and Thales responsible for delivering the UK's Marshall program to transform terminal air traffic management at military airfields. Marshall seeks to ensure a safe, efficient and sustainable air traffic management (ATM) service for the UK armed forces. It will modernise ATM at over 100 MoD locations, in the UK and overseas, including more than 60 airfields and ranges.

Aquila is tasked to deliver a system-wide modernisation and rationalisation of the current fragmented system, and establish a flexible ATM service which is future-proofed to meet potential changes in the regulatory and technological landscape.

Engineering

Engineering services NATS provides include:

Consultancy

Information services

Services provided by NATS include:

Former Operations

En-route control centres

The London Air Traffic Control Centre at RAF West Drayton opened in 1966 and provided ATC services until it closed in 2007, with the move to Swanwick.

Scottish air traffic control has been carried out from Atlantic House in Prestwick since 1978. This situation changed with the opening of the Prestwick Centre in 2010, to which all operational services were transferred from the old Atlantic House along with the functions carried out at the Manchester Area Control Centre which subsequently closed.

Airport services

NATS, through its airports service line, established an alliance with Spanish partner Ferrovial in 2011, forming FerroNATS, [11] which provides air traffic control (ATC) services at nine airports across Spain: Alicante, Valencia, Ibiza, Sabadell, Sevilla, Jerez, Melilla, Madrid Cuatro Vientos, Vigo and A Coruña airports in Spain. FerroNATS was awarded the contract to provide services at these airports through a competitive tender process run by the Spanish aviation authority, AENA. All nine operational handovers were completed between November 2012 and January 2014. In February 2023 FerroNATS was sold to Portobello Capital and renamed Skyway. [12]


Associations and alliances with other organisations

NATS is a full member of the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) joint undertaking, and a member of the SESAR Deployment Alliance, a cross-industry partnership made up of four airline groups, operators of 25 airports and 11 air traffic control providers. The SESAR Deployment Alliance was appointed to the role of SESAR Deployment Manager by the European Commission in December 2014 and will help to co-ordinate and synchronise the modernisation of Europe's air traffic management system. [13]

NATS is a founding member of two of Europe's leading ANSP Alliances – the A6 Alliance and the Borealis Alliance. [14] [15]

The A6 is an alliance of some of the main European Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs). Its aim is to help drive the modernisation of the European ATM network within the SESAR programme for the benefit of customers. The A6 members are full members of the SESAR Joint Undertaking and are part of the SESAR Deployment Alliance, which was recently appointed SESAR Deployment Manager by the European Commission.

The Borealis Alliance is an alliance of Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs). The Alliance includes the ANSPs of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Norway, Sweden and the UK. The Borealis Alliance is currently working on a major programme to deliver free route airspace across the whole of Northern Europe by 2020.

Since the 1940s, the Irish and UK air traffic control service providers have worked effectively together. This was further strengthened in July 2008 when the UK and Ireland launched the first operational Functional Airspace Block, often referred to in the industry as FAB, [16] under the European Commission's Single European Sky initiative. [17] [18]

NATS is a full member of the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation (CANSO), an international association of companies that provide air traffic control services.

NATS is a shareholder in European Satellite Services Provider (ESSP), a company set up to operate the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS). [19]

NATS is primarily known for the air traffic services it provides in the UK but also works internationally providing air traffic and consultancy services in over 30 countries,[ which? ] working with many different organisations in Europe and beyond, including Singapore, the United States and Qatar.

Notable incidents

From the 15th to 20 April 2010, under internationally agreed guidelines that require a zero tolerance approach to ash, NATS placed a series of restrictions on aircraft operating in UK controlled airspace owing to the potential dangers caused by a volcanic ash cloud from the eruption of Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull, [20] in cooperation with the Met Office, CAA and UK government.

On 12 December 2014, from 15:30 until 16:30, traffic flow throughout the London airspace was restricted due to a computer system failure at NATS. At 15:30 an announcement was made by Eurocontrol that "There has been a failure of the flight data computer server at London ACC [area control centre]." At 16:30 the airspace was reopened, however it remained restricted with some landing flights being turned away. [21] NATS reported that the failure was due to a single faulty line of software source code. [22]

On 28 August 2023 NATS suffered a major technical incident that caused severe delays. [2] It occurred on the busiest day of the year. [23] The incident lasted approximately 3 hours, however this caused knock-on delays. 790 flights departing UK airports and 785 flights arriving into UK airports were cancelled, representing about 27% of all flights. The following day at least 281 flights were cancelled. [24]

See also

Related Research Articles

The Single European Sky (SES) is a European Commission initiative that seeks to reform the European air traffic management system through a series of actions carried out in four different levels with the aim of satisfying the needs of the European airspace in terms of capacity, safety, efficiency and environmental impact.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Air traffic control</span> Public service provided for the purpose of maintaining the safe and orderly flow of air traffic

Air traffic control (ATC) is a service provided by ground-based air traffic controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through a given section of controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled airspace. The primary purpose of ATC worldwide is to prevent collisions, organize and expedite the flow of air traffic, and provide information and other support for pilots.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glasgow Prestwick Airport</span> Airport in South Ayrshire, Scotland

Glasgow Prestwick Airport, commonly referred to as Prestwick Airport, is an international airport serving the west of Scotland, situated one nautical mile northeast of the town of Prestwick in South Ayrshire and 32 miles southwest of Glasgow. It is the less busy of the two airports serving the western part of Scotland's Central Belt, after Glasgow Airport in Renfrewshire, within the Greater Glasgow conurbation. The airport serves the urban cluster surrounding Ayr, including: Kilmarnock, Irvine, Ardrossan, Troon, Saltcoats, Stevenston, Kilwinning, and Prestwick itself.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irish Aviation Authority</span> Commercial semi-state company in Ireland

The Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) is a commercial semi-state company in Ireland responsible for the regulation of safety aspects of air travel. Its head office is in The Times Building in Dublin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shanwick Oceanic Control</span> Area of International Airspace which lies above the northeast part of the North Atlantic

Shanwick is the air traffic control (ATC) name given to the area of international airspace which lies above the northeast part of the Atlantic Ocean.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ENAIRE</span> Spanish air navigation manager.

ENAIRE is the air navigation manager in Spain, certified for the provision of enroute, approach and aerodrome control services. As a public corporate entity attached to the Spanish Ministry of Public Works, it is responsible for air traffic control, aeronautical information and the communication, navigation and surveillance networks so air companies and their aircraft can fly safely and in an organised format within Spanish airspace.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eurocontrol</span> European air traffic organisation

The European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, commonly known as Eurocontrol, is an international organisation working to achieve safe and seamless air traffic management across Europe. Founded in 1963, Eurocontrol currently has 41 member states with headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. It has several local sites as well, including an Innovation Hub in Brétigny-sur-Orge, France, the Aviation Learning Centre (ALC) in Luxembourg, and the Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre (MUAC) in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The organisation employs approximately two thousand people, and operates with an annual budget in excess of half a billion Euro.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Air traffic management</span>

Air traffic management (ATM) aims at ensuring the safe and efficient flow of air traffic. It encompasses three types of services:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RAF Prestwick</span> Former Royal Air Force station in South Ayrshire, Scotland (1936–2013)

Royal Air Force Prestwick or simply known as RAF Prestwick, is a former Royal Air Force station based at the NATS air traffic control centre, adjacent to Glasgow Prestwick Airport, South Ayrshire, in south west Scotland. The unit was home to the Scottish Air Traffic Control Centre (Military) which provided an air traffic control service to military aircraft operating within its area of responsibility. Prestwick was also home to a Distress and Diversion (D&D) Cell which provided assistance to both military and civil aircraft in an emergency.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">North Atlantic Tracks</span> Transatlantic flight routes

The North Atlantic Tracks, officially titled the North Atlantic Organised Track System (NAT-OTS), are a structured set of transatlantic flight routes that stretch from eastern North America to western Europe across the Atlantic Ocean, within the North Atlantic airspace region. They ensure that aircraft are separated over the ocean, where there is little radar coverage. These heavily travelled routes are used by aircraft flying between North America and Europe, operating between the altitudes of 29,000 and 41,000 ft inclusive. Entrance and movement along these tracks is controlled by special oceanic control centres to maintain separation between aircraft. The primary purpose of these routes is to allow air traffic control to effectively separate the aircraft. Because of the volume of NAT traffic, allowing aircraft to choose their own co-ordinates would make the ATC task far more complex. They are aligned in such a way as to minimize any head winds and maximize tail winds impact on the aircraft. This results in much more efficiency by reducing fuel burn and flight time. To make such efficiencies possible, the routes are created twice daily to take account of the shifting of the winds aloft and the principal traffic flow, eastward in North America evening and westward twelve hours later.

System Wide Information Management (SWIM) is a global Air Traffic Management (ATM) industry initiative to harmonize the exchange of Aeronautical, Weather and Flight information for all Airspace Users and Stakeholders. SWIM is an integral part of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Global Air Navigation Plan (GANP). The GANP defines 4 Performance Improvement Areas (PIA), SWIM resides in PIA 2: Globally interoperable systems and data, where its implementation is further defined in Aviation System Block Upgrades (ASBU) B1-SWIM and B2-SWIM. ASBU B1-SWIM defines SWIM as a “a net-centric operation where the air traffic management (ATM) network is considered as a series of nodes, including the aircraft, providing or using information.” it goes on to say “The sharing of information of the required quality and timeliness in a secure environment is an essential enabler to the ATM target concept.”

In aviation, an air traffic service (ATS) is a service which regulates and assists aircraft in real-time to ensure their safe operations. In particular, ATS is to:

Gander Automated Air Traffic System (GAATS) is a proprietary system of Nav Canada used for the oceanic airspace of the Gander Area Control Centre (ACC).

Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) is a collaborative project to completely overhaul European airspace and its air traffic management (ATM). The actual program is managed by the SESAR Joint Undertaking as a public–private partnership (PPP).

Remote and virtual tower (RVT) is a modern concept where the air traffic service (ATS) at an airport is performed somewhere other than in the local control tower. Although it was initially developed for airports with low traffic levels, in 2021 it was implemented at a major international airport, London City Airport.

Borealis Alliance is an alliance among the north-west European Air Navigation Service Providers. Three Functional airspace blocks are part of the Alliance - IRL/UK, DK/SE & NEFAB - most members already cooperate in Noracon.

Airbus ProSky was an Airbus subsidiary dedicated to improving the performance of global air traffic management (ATM) prior to Airbus merging it with Airbus LUCEM and NAVTECH to form Navblue. Composed of ATM experts and offering various solutions to enhance air traffic capacity, efficiency and safety, Airbus ProSky works with air navigation service providers (ANSP), aircraft operators, airport authorities and Civil Aviation Authorities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Estonian Air Navigation Services</span> Company based in Estonia

Estonian Air Navigation Services, abbreviated as EANS, is a modern, rapidly developing company operating under the auspices of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications of the Republic of Estonia. It is a business entity, the major function of which is to provide services to air traffic in accordance with international standards as well as to ensure flight safety in Tallinn Flight Information Region. The sole owner of the company shares is the Republic of Estonia.

Aireon is an American company based in McLean, Virginia. Founded in 2011, it manufactures, deploys, and operates a global aircraft tracking and surveillance system utilizing satellite-based receivers to monitor the existing ADS-B transmissions of aircraft, for global air traffic surveillance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Unmanned aircraft system traffic management</span>

Unmanned aircraft system traffic management (UTM) is an air traffic management ecosystem under development for autonomously controlled operations of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) by the FAA, NASA, other federal partner agencies, and industry. They are collaboratively exploring concepts of operation, data exchange requirements, and a supporting framework to enable multiple UAS operations beyond visual line-of-sight at altitudes under 400 ft above ground level in airspace where FAA air traffic services are not provided.

References

  1. ↑ "NATS Holdings Limited – Results for the year ended 31 March 2021". 12 July 2021.
  2. 1 2 3 https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/30/uk-air-traffic-control-failure-what-caused-it-and-who-will-have-to-pay
  3. ↑ "IVAO Gander / Shanwick Oceanic". IVAO Gander.
  4. ↑ "About us". NATS. Retrieved 1 October 2012.
  5. ↑ "NATS: Our Story", NATS Communications, 2006
  6. ↑ "History". NATS. Retrieved 1 October 2012.
  7. ↑ "Refinancing the Public Private Partnership for National Air Traffic Services - National Audit Office (NAO) report". National Audit Office (NAO). 7 January 2004.
  8. ↑ "A Public Private Partnership". NATS – Our Ownership. Archived from the original on 21 April 2014. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
  9. ↑ "Annual Report and Accounts" (PDF). NATS. Retrieved 14 February 2023.
  10. ↑ "NATS Corp Presentation 1119 V6" . Retrieved 26 June 2022.
  11. ↑ "ferroNATS". ferronats.
  12. ↑ "Adios FerroNATS, thanks for the memories". NATS. 1 February 2023. Retrieved 14 May 2023.
  13. ↑ "SESAR Deployment Manager". SESAR Deployment Manager, Funded by the European Union. 22 April 2015. Retrieved 25 April 2015.
  14. ↑ "A6 Alliance". A6 Alliance. 22 April 2015. Retrieved 25 April 2015.
  15. ↑ "Borealis Alliance". Borealis Alliance, Borealis is a registered trademark. 22 April 2015. Retrieved 25 April 2015.
  16. ↑ "UK Ireland FAB". UK Ireland FAB. 14 July 2013. Retrieved 27 April 2015.
  17. ↑ "FAQs". NATS. 14 July 2009. Retrieved 1 October 2012.
  18. ↑ "NATS and IAA publish three-year plan for Functional Airspace Block (FAB)". Atc-network.com. 18 May 2009. Archived from the original on 19 July 2012. Retrieved 1 October 2012.
  19. ↑ https://www.essp-sas.eu/about-us/
  20. ↑ BBC News – Iceland volcano: UK flights grounded for second day 16 April 2010
  21. ↑ "Flights disrupted after computer failure at UK control centre". BBC. 12 December 2014. Retrieved 1 June 2015.
  22. ↑ "Air chaos: Vince Cable accuses Nats of poor investment". BBC. 14 December 2014. Retrieved 1 June 2015.
  23. ↑ "Air traffic control latest: Britons stuck on tarmac abroad - amid warning disruption could last into the week". Sky News. Retrieved 28 August 2023.
  24. ↑ "Air traffic control live updates: Hundreds of UK flights cancelled as disruption 'set to last days'". BBC News. Retrieved 29 August 2023.
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