As our skies become increasingly busy, we want to create an environment where everyone knows as much as possible about the traffic in the airspace around them, making it safer for all.

Yesterday I joined colleagues at the World ATM Congress for a discussion about some of the key challenges facing those of us in the world of air traffic management in the years to come.

Without meaningful airspace modernisation, the UK faces the prospect of delays 50 times what they are today, something that will cost airlines over £1bn each year and our wider economy an awful lot more.

The FPL ensures that any pilot, anywhere in the world, with whatever payload, can be sure that air traffic controllers are looking out for them and managing the orderly flow of air traffic.

With the Christmas and New Year celebrations already a distant memory, 2016 is shaping up as another very challenging and exciting year for both NATS and the wider aviation industry.

The unprecedented growth of drones or RPAS (Remotely Piloted Aircraft System), within the toy, hobby and professional markets shows no sign of slowing down as system developments are making RPAS more affordable and accessible. I am sure that many people will have recently received one for Christmas and be eager to see what it can do.

We thought we’d share our favourite aviation blogs from 2015 with you. Is there something you would like us to cover in 2016? Which was your personal favourite blog we posted from 2015?

Any UK airspace users expecting to fly this coming Thursday night are being told to be aware of the presence of a vintage flying sleigh travelling at high speed around the country.

Some readers of the general media coverage of this year’s Dubai Airshow will have come to the conclusion that the astonishing regional growth in aviation is slowing, if not yet coming to a hard stop.

Aviation produces greenhouse gases, that’s a fact we can’t ignore and yet at the same time the world has become addicted to flying. Later today I will be speaking at the UN Climate Change Summit in Paris to demonstrate some of what we’re doing to deliver CO2 emission reductions.