Record air traffic movements

In April, NATS handled 212,675 flights in UK airspace, an increase of just under 2% compared to April 2018.

There was growth in most areas of the operation, in particular in transatlantic and non-transatlantic international overflying traffic. There was also growth at all of the ’big five’ London airports.

The figures show that NATS handled almost a quarter of all the traffic in Europe in the month and the levels of air traffic control delay in UK airspace were very low; across all 212,675 flights handled in April, 99.5% had no NATS attributable delay. Year to date, the average air traffic control delay per flight is just 2.2 seconds.

Juliet Kennedy, NATS operations director, said: “April proved to be as busy as forecasts had suggested, yet in spite of the extra flights handled, delays were minimal and continue to be far less than elsewhere in Europe.”  See in this issue Airspace modernisation. Whilst NATS have not released official figures with the extra flights to Madrid for the Champions League final this is expected to top 9,000 for Friday (31 May 2019). BTN will be taking an in-depth look at NATS in a later issue. 

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