NATS air traffic controller selection: the complete guide

NATS runs the UK’s main recruitment route for trainee air traffic controllers. Selection is four stages, sat in order, and each one screens out candidates before the next. This page covers all four — what happens, what NATS publishes about it, and what it does not.

Before you apply: are you eligible?

NATS publishes its entry requirements, and they are firm. You need all of them, not most of them.

• Aged 18 or over.
• An indefinite, unrestricted right to work in the UK.
• Five GCSEs at grade 4 or above (or equivalent), which must include English and Maths.
• The ability to pass SC-level security clearance.
• The ability to pass a Class 3 medical assessment.
• Willingness to adhere to the drug and alcohol policy.

You do not need a degree, a pilot’s licence, or any aviation background. NATS recruits ab-initio and trains you from scratch. What it will not do is train around a missing GCSE.

Stage 1 — the online ability tests

Stage 1 is a battery of eleven online ability tests, sat remotely. It is the biggest sift in the process: most candidates who are rejected are rejected here.

NATS names the areas the tests cover — spatial awareness, logical thinking, numerical ability, sense of direction and reaction speed — but it does not publish which individual tests it uses, how long each one runs, or the score you need. That is the single most important thing to understand about preparing for Stage 1: you can train the abilities, and you cannot rehearse the exact paper.

• Spatial awareness — holding an orientation in your head and transforming it.
• Logical thinking — deducing a rule from examples and applying it.
• Numerical ability — quick, accurate arithmetic and reading data under time pressure.
• Sense of direction — tracking a heading change and knowing which way you now face.
• Reaction speed — responding fast without letting accuracy collapse.

The practical consequence: speed matters as much as accuracy. These are speeded tests, and candidates who are careful but slow score badly. Practise against a clock from the start rather than working through questions untimed.

Stage 2 — situational judgement and listening

Pass Stage 1 and you sit two further online tests, virtually proctored by Aon: a situational judgement test and a listening comprehension test.

NATS describes the SJT as assessing how you evaluate possible responses to workplace situations. That one sentence is the entire published specification — the format, the number of items and the scoring are not released. The scenarios do not require air traffic knowledge, because you have not been trained yet; they are about judgement.

The listening test assesses, in NATS’s words, how accurately you understand, retain and use spoken information. In an operational room you take instructions and readbacks by ear, at pace, in a range of accents, and you cannot ask for a third repeat. The test is a proxy for that.

Stage 3 — the assessment centre

Stage 3 is a virtual assessment centre held over Microsoft Teams. It contains three things, and candidates routinely prepare for only the first.

• An interview — competency-based, with a single assessor.
• An air traffic control knowledge test.
• A retest of your earlier ability tests, while being observed.

The interview is evidence-based. Expect questions in the form ‘describe a time when…’, and expect follow-ups: what were the other options, what did you actually say, what would you do differently. Candidates consistently describe NATS interviewers as friendly and professional — it is not a stress interview, but a vague answer will be probed until it produces something concrete or falls over.

Answer in STAR: the situation, the task you held, the action you personally took, and the result. Most candidates deliver situation and action and then trail off, which loses the part that actually shows judgement. Say ‘I’, not ‘we’ — the assessor is marking you, not your team.

The knowledge test is drawn from documents NATS sends you before the centre; the invitation carries the link and the password. That pack is the only source that counts. Crowdsourced flashcard decks go stale between campaigns and carry other people’s errors.

The observed retest exists to confirm the Stage 1 and Stage 2 results were genuinely yours. There is no technique to it — if you sat the originals honestly, keep practising so you arrive in the same shape.

Stage 4 — the practical exercise

Stage 4 is a practical exercise, delivered over Teams or face to face at NATS’s Whiteley office. You are briefed, then work a simulated section of airspace across a series of short runs, explaining your reasoning and taking assessor feedback between them.

The structure is the point: it is not one attempt scored once. It samples whether you take correction and apply it under pressure — which is exactly what the training pipeline will ask of you for the next year and a half. Being coachable is being assessed.

The competencies the interview is built around

The established guidance consolidates to twelve areas. Prepare a real example for each; several can share a story as long as you can pull out the different part each time.

• Teamwork, communication and accountability.
• Adaptability and resilience.
• Decision-making under time pressure and with incomplete information.
• Learning from feedback, and performing while observed.
• Managing pressure and competing priorities.
• Following procedures — including when a shortcut would be faster.
• Responding to your own mistakes, with ownership rather than blame.
• Motivation for the career, and a realistic understanding of the training and mobility.

If you pass: training and the job

Training is roughly 12 to 18 months of college-based work depending on specialism, at the NATS training centre at Whiteley in Hampshire or at Global ATS in Gloucestershire. It combines theory with simulator practice and is assessed continuously. After college you are posted to an operational unit for hands-on training on live traffic until you validate — qualify to work the position unsupervised.

You do not choose your discipline. Aerodrome control (the tower), approach control (arrivals and departures) and area control (en-route, worked by radar from a centre) are assigned during training based on need and performance. Nor do you choose your unit. Both surprise candidates who have assumed otherwise, and both come up at interview.

What NATS does not publish

It is worth stating plainly, because most pages competing for this search will imply otherwise. NATS does not release its question bank, the timings of individual Stage 1 tests, the number of items in any test, the pass mark for any stage, the SJT scoring model, or the Stage 3 knowledge-test syllabus.

So no preparation resource — this one included — can honestly claim to reproduce the real tests. What it can do is train the abilities NATS names, in the same formats and under the same kind of time pressure, so that nothing on the day is unfamiliar. Treat any site that advertises the real questions with suspicion: it is either guessing or repeating someone’s recall of a different campaign.

A sensible preparation order

• Start with Stage 1, because that is where most candidates fail and where practice pays most. Work to a clock.
• Find your weakest ability area and give it disproportionate time — a single weak area is what fails a battery.
• Move to Stage 2 once Stage 1 feels comfortable: judgement scenarios, and listening at operational pace.
• Write your competency examples out before you need them. Six solid stories, each with a result, covers most of the interview.
• Read the Stage 3 pack properly when it arrives, more than once.
• Keep practising the ability tests right up to the assessment centre — the observed retest is the same tests again.