Air traffic controllers at a Hampshire based National Air Traffic Services (NATS) centre are gearing up for the busiest flying day of the year as millions of holidaymakers begin their summer getaway.

With many schools across England breaking up for the summer holidays, air traffic controllers in the Swanwick control centre are preparing to handle thousands of flights.

Juliet Kennedy, Operations Director at the NATS Swanwick Control Centre, Hampshire said: “We have been working incredibly closely with our airline and airport partners to make sure the whole system is prepared and ready to handle today’s influx of passengers and flights.

"We want to make sure everyone can get away for their well-earned break easily efficiently and safely.”

“More people than ever want to fly, which is why good planning and air traffic management is so important.”

Daily Echo:

Air traffic controllers here have responsibility for the airspace over most of England and Wales, including the busy London airports where in excess of 3,500 flights take-off and land from just six runways.

Routes to all the usual holiday destinations in Spain, the Canaries and southern Europe are expected to be busy and NATS has been preparing for weeks to ensure flights get away safely and with the minimum delay.

July is always a busy month for air traffic with 230,000 flights recorded in July 2014, around 1,000 more a day compared to the usual monthly average.

Preparation and planning for big peaks in demand begins months in advance with NATS analysing airline schedules and airport capacity to make sure it has the resources to safely handle the expected demand.

That plan is then constantly tweaked and updated.

As well as Hampshire, NATS manages control centres at Prestwick and Ayrshire.

Last year NATS choreographed safe journeys for a total of 2.2 million flights, an increase of 2.5 per cent on the year before.

Yet despite the growing demand to fly, 99.8 per cent of those flights experienced no air traffic control delays at all.