History of air traffic control in the United Kingdom
The history of air traffic control in the United Kingdom began in the late 1950s, and early 1960s, when an integrated and coordinated system began, once radar had become sufficiently advanced to allow this.
London Airport
On 15 July 1919, the world's first commercial flight occurred, when Henry Shaw (1892-1977) piloted a de Havilland DH.9 for Aircraft Transport and Travel from Hendon to Le Bourget airfield in Paris.[1] The pilot did not have a passport.
Jimmy Jeffs was the world's first air traffic controller at London Airport on 22 February 1922. The Mayday callsign originated at London Airport in 1921.
From 1928, radio signals from Croydon, Pulham in Norfolk and Lymm in Kent triangulated the position of aircraft; a similar system was set up by Germany in 1940, known as the Battle of the Beams.
Development of radar
On the evening of 25 February 1935 at Stowe Nine Churches (Upper Stowe) in Northamptonshire, the so-called Daventry experiment took place with Robert Watson-Watt to prove that radar detection of aircraft was possible.
Integration
On Wednesday 18 June 1958, a £5m plan for coordinating air traffic control was announced. Four new radar centres would be built; previous to this, ATC personnel received aircraft positional information over the radio from pilots, not from any radar. The UK Air Traffic Service began in September 1959; it controlled air movements above 25,000 ft.
Upper airspace routes, known as air ways, were created in the late 1950s. The USA had created its Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) also in 1958.
Coordinating organisation
On Monday 10 December 1962, Julian Amery, the Minister for Aviation, announced the new National Air Traffic Control Services, with a central controller. Military air traffic control was controlled by the Military Air Traffic Organisation.
By the early 1970s, the coordinating organisation was known as NATS.
Controllers
ATC personnel were represented by the Institution of Professional Civil Servants, which became Institution of Professionals, Managers and Specialists in 1989.
Training
In the early 1960s, both military and civil radar operators were trained at a joint school at RAF Sopley.
Around sixty countries would send ATC trainees to the College of Air Traffic Control (CATC) in Dorset, including Eastern Europe. The Central Air Traffic Control School trained military ATC personnel from 1963; the first women ATC trainees began later in 1963.
Aircraft movements
There were 372,000 aircraft movements in the UK in 1960, 480,000 in 1962, and 610,000 by 1969.[2]
In 2017, NATS handled around 2.5 million flights.
The UK has the third-largest aviation network after the US and China. Up to 80% of North Atlantic air traffic passes through UK airspace. The Shanwick OCA (Shanwick Oceanic Control) was formed in 1966, and controlled from Prestwick, with two communication towers in southern Ireland and Gloucestershire.
The Concorde route from Heathrow Airport to Bahrain was the world's first supersonic air transport route.
Radar stations
Civilian
In August 1970, a new £150,000 Plessey DASR-1 radar for Titterstone Clee Hill, in Shropshire, was built.[3]
Military
In the early 1960s, the RAF had four main military radar units.
European central air traffic control
On Friday 20 December 1968, an agreement was signed to build Europe's first international control centre at Maastricht, to open in 1972, called the Maastricht Automatic Data Processing system or MADAP, which is now called the Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre; for the site, Plessey would built two computers, the controllers' consoles and a radar distribution unit.
Much of European air traffic control is ran on the CIMACT software package.
The Single European Sky was created in the late 1990s, being official from 2001.
References
- Forging Empires and Oceans: Pioneers, Aviators and Adventurers - Forging the International Air Routes (1919-39), page 100, Robert Bluffield, 2014
- Birmingham Daily Post, 26 November 1969, page 1
- American Radio History