Advancing aviation, keeping the skies safe
We are the UK's leading provider of air traffic control services. In a typical year pre-Covid, we would handle 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 we’ve have handled your flight.
Outside of the UK we offer air traffic services to customers including airports, airlines, air traffic service providers and governments. We currently provide these across parts of Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
You can download an overview presentation about NATS from our Media Centre on our Company website to find out more.
We exist to make the skies an even safer and more efficient environment for aviation.
With this in mind, two things drive everything we do. The first is safety, a duty of care for the skies. It's what we've always done and what we'll always do. The second is a constant striving for improvement to ensure aviation best meets the needs of a changing world.
At NATS our purpose is core to our being, and we define it as; Advancing aviation, keeping the skies safe.
We have around 4,500 employees working at NATS dedicated to advancing aviation, keeping the skies safe. That includes 1,700 Air Traffic Controllers, 650 Air Traffic Service Assistants, 1,000 engineers, and 1,000 other specialists.
We value diversity and strive to create a positive and friendly working environment where everybody is encouraged to make the most of their potential.
You can find out more about working at NATS in our Careers section.
In the UK, we provide air traffic services at 13 airports (including Heathrow) and manage all UK upper airspace from our two air traffic control centres located at Swanwick in Hampshire and Prestwick in Ayrshire.
We also have around a thousand industry specialists based at our offices in Whiteley, Hampshire and Central London.
Outside of the UK we provide air traffic services at Gibraltar Airport and, in a joint venture with Ferrovial – ‘FerroNATS’ - at nine airports across Spain.
We also have small offices in the Middle East and Asia Pacific regions to support our growing international business.
Everything we do at NATS is underpinned by our values. They form the basis of our culture, our actions and how we embody our purpose. When we live our values, we develop strong relationships which allow us to perform at our best.
We solve problems, managing complexity and embracing the big challenges our customers face every day. We are a leader in aviation, agile and responsive, helping our customers realise opportunities by bringing predictability to their operations.
We are one committed team, passionate about aviation. We value our colleagues, demanding the best of each other, working collaboratively with integrity and respect. This enables us to deliver for our customers, working in partnership with all stakeholders.
It is people that create safety. Every one of us has a part to play in ensuring our operational, physical, cyber and personal safety every day.
We celebrate the diversity of our colleagues. We thrive because we are all brilliantly different yet united in our passion to advance aviation and keep the skies safe.
We want to be inclusive, respectful, and diverse. We are listening, learning, and paying attention to the world. Colleagues help guide our actions and we are all taking positive steps so everyone can be themselves and succeed. Brilliantly different, under the same sky.
Our employee networks are helping colleagues connect, share and shape an inclusive working environment. They are run by colleagues who are united in their passion to grow both personally and professionally; creating a safe workplace for all while helping to define our vision for the future of aviation.
We currently have five employee networks: The Ability Network, globeAll (representing ethnic and cultural minority employees), SkyPride (LGBTQ+), Women’s Network and the Young Professionals Network.
We have adopted agile working to give our non-operational teams greater flexibility and an increased element of choice over working arrangements, with the opportunity to work in our modern office facilities as well as remotely. Our operational colleagues will typically be based at one of our operation centres or at an airport. However, some roles may also offer flexibility to work remotely from time to time.
We welcome discussions on flexible and part-time working arrangements and regularly seek feedback from colleagues to understand what they think about their working environment in order to continually drive improvement.
As a large company with multiple sites across the UK and overseas, we play a positive role in the socio-economic development of the communities in which we operate, creating highly skilled and paid roles as well as supporting a range of charities and other good causes. There are a number of initiatives which underpin our work with communities, including:
While aviation delivers strong economic and social benefits to the UK and beyond, it also has a clear impact on the environment; we see it as our responsibility to help drive, deliver and maintain a sustainable future for the industry.
Reducing aviation's environmental impact and saving fuel is important to us and our customers. As part of our environmental strategy, we are implementing smarter and more responsive ways to do this.
Understanding the perspective of communities affected by aviation is a central part of our work to be a responsible business. We listen to the wide range of views and feed these back into the business, so colleagues understand the societal impacts of the day-to-day and longer-term decisions we make. When we redesign airspace structures at lower levels we consider how to minimise the impact of aircraft noise on local communities.
We have a strong tradition of fundraising for causes that matter to us and these include important partnerships with charities such as ‘Aerobility’, who provide terminally ill and disabled individuals the opportunity to fly an aeroplane, and ‘The Jon Egging Trust’, who help young people overcome adversity and realise their potential.
Our colleagues are able to support charities and causes they care about via the ‘Give As You Earn’ scheme; a voluntary, simple and tax-free way to donate to their favourite charity straight from gross salary. We also have the NATS Footprint Fund which provides employees with small grants to support their personal commitments to worthy causes in their local communities.
We provide our colleagues with the opportunity and support to directly contribute their time to local charities and community activities through volunteering, especially for our corporate charity partners. This can range from beach cleans or decorating projects for schools and maths mentoring.
We actively promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects in schools and colleges, career roadshows and tailored classroom-based learning activities, as well as providing sponsorship for several educational projects. This also includes regularly hosting students with our work experience programme, Future Minds programme for girls, and Blue Skies Programme for the Jon Egging Trust.
Whoever you are, whatever you want to do, we can help you make the most of your potential - and build an exceptional career.
If you share our passion to advance aviation and keep the skies safe – we would like to hear from you whatever your age, sex, race, faith, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, visible or invisible disability. Individuals that bring different perspectives, skills, life experiences and backgrounds help us be at the forefront of our industry.
Please explore the Virtual Exhibition and the Early Career Scheme opportunities available, and if interested, apply!
Safety is at the heart of what we do and who we are
Our people are critical to the evolution of the aviation industry
The processes and practices underpinning an effective business
Where the future of Air Traffic Management solutions come to life