NATS records busiest ever day in UK airspace
In July, NATS handled 252,173 flights in UK airspace, an increase of 0.9 per cent on the same month last year.
There was growth in many areas of the operation, especially non-transatlantic international overflying traffic and transatlantic overflights, increasing by 6.5 per cent and five per cent respectively.
Traffic grew at seven of the 13 airports where NATS provides the air traffic control service, including three of the ‘big five’ London Airports – Heathrow, Luton and London City.
NATS handled almost 24 per cent of Europe’s traffic in July, maintaining high levels of punctuality.
Across all 252,173 flights handled in July, 98 per cent had no NATS-attributable delay.
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Year to date, the average air traffic control delay per flight is just seven seconds.
Juliet Kennedy, NATS operations director, said: “Last month we recorded our busiest-ever day, with 8,863 flights handled by controllers on Friday, July 5th.
“However, that’s not to say that this record won’t be broken again over the summer holiday season.
“Our air traffic controllers, in our centres and at the airports, are now regularly managing a total of more than 8,000 flights a day, and working extremely hard to ensure that each flight is handled safely and efficiently.”