NATS is the UK's leading provider of air traffic control services. In a typical year, NATS handles over 2.5 million flights and 250 million passengers travelling over the UK and across the North Atlantic. If you’ve been a passenger on a commercial aircraft flying in UK airspace then it's highly likely that NATS has handled your flight. Outside of the UK NATS offers leading air traffic products and services to customers including airports, airlines, air traffic service providers and governments. It currently provides these across parts of Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia.

Website

Martin Rolfe, CEO of NATS

What is the added value of being a member of the SESAR JU?

Becoming a member of the SESAR JU means we can build on our collaboration with the excellent minds that are involved in the SESAR research and innovation programme to enhance our capabilities and contribution. Knowledge sharing is at the core of that. Returning to being part of SESAR’s governance committees gives us an opportunity to discuss and help shape the future of ATM in Europe, which is vital for us given that we manage around 24% of the continent’s air traffic. Ensuring our future ATM systems are interoperable with those of our European partners is, for that reason, essential.

Many other members of the SESAR JU face similar challenges such as the integration of new users, increasing focus on sustainability and allowing for future growth, so it’s invaluable to be able to discuss these challenges and collaborate on solutions that bring us closer to achieving common goals.

We have contributed to and look forward to the adoption of the updated ATM Master Plan later this year, which is also an important reference document in relation to the UK Airspace Modernisation Strategy. Successful deployment of SESAR projects is, and has always been, of great importance to NATS and we welcome the increased focus on deployment in the updated Master Plan.

Civil air traffic continues to grow, with additional demand from new users putting more strain on capacity, while the pressure for environmental improvement is ever increasing. It is therefore a crucial time for European ATM partners to work together on developing and deploying innovative solutions that will transform Europe’s airspace into the most efficient and environmentally conscious in the world. NATS becoming a member of the SESAR JU helps us to play an active part in achieving that goal. This is a significant milestone for us on our journey towards shaping the future of air traffic management and designing the skies for the future.

What are NATS’ top three innovation priorities?

We are an organisation that is consistently looking to innovate. Our three main innovation priorities link back to our overarching strategy, which is based around automation, allowing us to develop a safer, more efficient operation for increasing traffic levels; integration of new users; and sustainability, as we play our part in the journey towards Net Zero.

In which flagships of the Digital European Sky programme is NATS particularly interested in getting involved, and why?

We are involved in 21 SESAR research projects which address seven of the nine flagships. The ‘Connected and automated ATM’ is a key flagship for NATS because it enables us to further develop concepts and tools to support our operation. We need to be able to do this by sharing data, considering the overall network impact and integrating new users in the most sustainable and efficient way possible.

Our deepest involvement is in the ‘Aviation green deal’ flagship where we are continuing to find new methods to improve the environmental profile for individual flights and are participating in new areas of research in the SESAR 3 programme. This includes looking to reduce the non-CO2 effects of aviation by mitigating contrail impacts and researching formation flying which can help reduce fuel burn and emissions.