It’s the summer holidays for schools in the UK and that means many people will be jetting off for holidays. In fact, every day 100,000 planes take off and land around the world, meaning the sky above us can get busy.
Making sure planes are able to reach their destinations safely isn’t just the responsibility of the pilots – there are also lots of people on the ground guiding planes through the skies.
In the UK, 1,700 air traffic controllers are employed by the National Air Traffic Service (NATS). NATS has 15 UK airport control towers – the tall structures you see at airports – and two bases, one in Swanwick, England, and the other at Prestwick, Scotland. Using special technology, these controllers make sure planes are being tracked at all times during their flights. There are air traffic controllers on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Although air traffic controllers can’t actually see planes most of the time, they know where they are because of radar. Radar is a system that uses radio waves (waves of light that are invisible to the naked eye) to work out where objects are, based on how the waves are reflected off them.
