Britain's national air traffic control service could follow the High Speed One rail link into full private ownership after the government raised the sale of its shareholding in Nats (formerly known as National Air Traffic Services) today.

The Treasury is to open discussions with fellow shareholders in Britain's dominant air traffic controller over selling its 49% stake, the chancellor, George Osborne, said in his budget speech today. Nats is 42%-owned by a consortium of airlines including easyJet, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, with 5% controlled by staff and a further 4% owned by airport group BAA. A spokesman for easyJet said the airline would oppose selling the shareholding to a private investor more interested in profit than running an efficient service.

EU transport ministers have signed a second "open skies" agreement with the US at a meeting in Luxembourg.

The new deal, which follows the first open skies agreement of 2007, is designed to make it easier for US and European airlines to buy each other.

Currently there are limits to foreign ownership of US and EU airlines.

European carriers can only own 25% of US airlines at present, while US carriers can take 49.9% stakes in their European competitors.

The deal should see those limits raised, though the new levels have yet to be decided.

The provisionally agreed deal could also still be blocked by US lawmakers, who would need to approve new legislation to allow foreign owners to increase their stakes in US airlines.

The 200 hour monthly total is also being broken, according to the denuncia
An air traffic controller who works for the Spanish Airports Authority AENA in Málaga, has presented a denuncia to the provincial work inspectors claiming that controllers are being expected to work 17 hour long shifts. He claims the shifts violate AENA’s own guidelines.
The denuncia, which has been seen by the El Mundo newspaper, is based on the shift rota for Málaga for July this year, which by law has to be published ten days before hand. It shows 17 hour long shifts, thus breaking the 12 hour maximum established by AENA, although the work over the month does not exceed another guideline of 200 hours total. But the complaint notes that controllers are obliged to be available 30 minutes before their shift and again after, and that would take the monthly working hour total to 223.

The Federal Aviation Administration is working with its European counterpart to develop and deploy technologies to integrate transatlantic air traffic control.

Hank Krakowski, chief operating officer at FAA, and Daniel Calleja, the European Commission's director for air transport, signed an agreement on Friday to research specific initiatives for the air traffic modernization programs the United States and the European Commission are working on.
FAA is developing NextGen, an ambitious $20 billion program to replace the nation's aging radar-based air traffic control system with a satellite-based network by 2020. The European Commission is building Single European Sky ATM Research, a program launched in 2004 that will modernize Europe's air traffic management system.

Air traffic control services provider NATS has launched an online checking test to recruit the highest quality candidates for its air traffic controller (ATC) roles.
The new testing, provided by SHL, will be integrated into an existing online recruitment management system provided by software provider Peopleclick Authoria, improving the efficiency of the recruitment process.
It is hoped the new online recruitment process will significantly reduce the time taken to evaluate candidate results and will enable NATS to quickly re-engage with candidates once the test has been taken, leading to an improved candidate experience.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has ordered a probe into the total black-out of the air traffic control (ATC) system early on Tuesday morning. The ATC system reportedly blacked out early in the morning for almost 21 minutes, forcing the suspension of flight operations.

Officials said even the back-up system failed and the ATC had to rely on portable battery to sustain operations. "The radar screens went blank and the officials lost exact details of the flights approaching to land," an official said. "Back-up systems and VHF radio also failed. The ATC had to rely on portable battery," he added.

The U.S. and the European Union expect to sign an agreement that will increase cooperation on their new-generation systems for highly efficient air-traffic management, people close to the talks say.
Authorities from both sides of the Atlantic have been working for years to develop satellite-based navigation equipment that will enable pilots to fly more direct routes and provide controllers with advanced tools to safely handle many more planes in the same airspace.
Until now, the formal U.S. and EU efforts have been separate, though companies and government officials from both sides of the Atlantic have shared concepts. Industry officials around the globe have worried that the world's two biggest aviation markets could end up developing incompatible solutions. Airline executives have warned that they can't afford to install multiple systems to fly in different parts of the world.

The Federal Aviation Administration is studying how to integrate unmanned aerial vehicles into U.S. airspace alongside conventional aircraft. Although UAVs have been flying in the United States for several years, they are limited to restricted airspace as well as portions of the borders with Canada and Mexico.

The problem of operating unmanned aircraft within the same airspace as conventional aircraft has been a contentious issue for pilots and carriers. Under an agreement the FAA signed last week with Boeing subsidiary Insitu, the feds will begin flying an unmanned aircraft as part of continuing research using air-traffic-control simulations. Insitu will provide the FAA with a ScanEagle unmanned aircraft system for the research, which will be conducted at the William J. Hughes Technical Training Center in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

On 3 June 2010, the air navigation service providers (ANSPs) of the Functional Airspace Block Europe Central (FABEC) agreed on cooperating in air traffic controller (ATCO) basic training. The common FABEC training network including all current FABEC training entities (ENAC, Belgocontrol, DFS, LVNL and skyguide) will
provide joint ATCO basic training so as both to meet their own training needs and to offer capacities to the FABEC partner Maastricht UAC and possible other customers.
 
This Cooperation Agreement ranges from jointly providing ATCO Basic Training to the contracting parties in compliance with their common objectives and requirements in terms of content and quality, to coordinating available training capacity as well as to continuously improving the use of existing resources throughout FABEC.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposes to amend its regulations that would require an air traffic controller to retire at age 56. Under the current policy an air traffic controller must be 18 years of age, the maximum age one can start training is aged 30 and they must retire at 56 years old. However, if someone had previously held an air traffic controller position such as in the military, they may join up to 31 years of age.