Air Traffic Control Services

Date 11.06.2015

Norway’s brightest future air traffic controllers are to be trained in the UK from this September, after Air traffic Management company NATS won a multi-year contract with the Norwegian air navigation services provider, Avinor.

From September up to 28 student controllers will attend NATS’ specialist college in Hampshire for their initial training. Each will be put through their paces in a nine-month course taking in the key aspects of air traffic management, including aerodrome, approach and area control training using NATS’ state-of-the-art simulators.

Once the students have passed the initial course at NATS they will return to Norway to complete their in-country training and final validations.

Anders Kirsebom, Managing Director of Avinor Air Navigation Services, said: “We are very satisfied by the offer from NATS, and we are pleased to see that there is a highly competitive market for these services.  Our future air traffic controllers will get the best possible starting point of their career, and the agreement with NATS provides Avinor with the efficiency and flexibility needed to maintain our position as one of Europe’s most efficient air navigation service providers.”

Clare MacDonald, NATS Head of Training, added: “We’re delighted to have been awarded this contract from Avinor. The trainee controllers can expect a warm welcome as well as first class training facilities. In order to win this we demonstrated that we provide good value, high quality training with excellent validation rates, and that we are flexible in our approach.”