LO
DeploymentCognitive automation2025-03-26
NATS deployed its Intelligent Approach sequencing tool at Gatwick Airport, giving controllers radar markers to sequence arrivals from live wind data instead of fixed spacing distances
Air traffic controlleroccupation page →
Event date / reported
2025-03-26
Evidence stage
DeploymentAn employer has put it into production. Can move the baseline — weighted by scale and how similar the setting is.
Tasks this bears on
Building the sequence
Deciding the order and spacing in which a stream of arrivals will reach one runway, and adjusting it as weather, speed and a late departure move underneath the plan.
Being augmented✓ Evidence-backed
Where this applies
NATS (National Air Traffic Services), the UK's designated air navigation service provider, announced on its own news site (26 March 2025) that it had deployed Intelligent Approach with Advanced Mixed Mode capability, a tool developed jointly with Leidos, at London Gatwick Airport, the first time it has been used at a single-runway mixed-mode airport where arrivals and departures share a runway. The tool replaces fixed-distance aircraft separation with dynamically calculated time-based intervals based on live wind conditions, and works by putting markers on a controller's radar screen that help them precisely place each arrival to build the most efficient sequence; NATS states controllers keep the decision. NATS reports the tool had already been deployed at Heathrow, where it cut headwind delays by 62 percent, and at Toronto Pearson and Amsterdam Schiphol. For Gatwick, NATS predicts the change will cut CO2 emissions by 11,000 to 19,000 tonnes a year and reduce holding and delays; those Gatwick figures are a prediction stated alongside the deployment, not a separately measured outcome. This describes one tool at four named airports, developed and reported by the air navigation provider that operates it, and does not establish adoption at other providers or say what share of a controller's shift the tool now covers.
What this means
The UK's air navigation provider has actually deployed an automated spacing tool that hands a controller radar markers for where to place each arriving aircraft, and it has already measured a 62 percent cut in headwind delays at a previous airport.
What it does not yet show
This is one tool at four named airports run by one air navigation provider; it does not establish that other countries' controllers use anything like it, and it does not say what share of a shift the tool now covers, only that the controller still makes the final call.
What you can check
If you work air traffic control, find out whether your own provider has deployed a time-based or interval-management spacing tool, and ask what decision, if any, it still leaves to you.
Does it change the assessment?
No. The impact index is never moved by a single event. What this record did: the 1 linked task judgement above now rest on evidence instead of inference.
Source
NATS (UK air navigation service provider) — press release · verified 2026-09-23 · VOLO agent loop · interpreted 2026-09-23 · VOLO agent loop
Primary source — published by the party that did this, or the authority of record. No co-signature needed.