I was privileged to have the opportunity to address a distinguished audience at the Royal Academy of Engineering at their New Year Reception.

It was an occasion to showcase NATS and its vital role in the UK economy, offering a glimpse of the real air traffic control (ATC) operation today, and hypothesise on what might be seen in the future, as technologies allow us to challenge how we have always done things.

More and more young people are finishing their A levels and BTEC level 3s looking for an alternative to university. Well-structured apprenticeship schemes are increasingly popular and considered as a really positive alternative for school and college leavers who already have an idea of what they want to do.

NATS now offers an advanced engineering apprenticeship scheme to reflect this change in the marketplace.

Today we announced that NATS is now enabling annual savings of almost 1m tonnes of CO2 in UK airspace – that worth £115m a year in fuel savings to airlines.

What do aviation and elite sports have in common?

‘If Nike ran air traffic control, what would it look like’, explains how NATS uses techniques associated with elite sports to help its people keep the skies safe. This was the basis of a recent speech delivered at the annual Leaders Sport Performance in London, with the likes of Arsenal FC manager Arsene Wenger and former England cricket coach Andy Flower as fellow keynote speakers.

Over the past few years more and more effort has gone into reducing the impact that aviation has on the environment. But, even if we were able to drastically cut carbon emission tomorrow some impact from climate change is now inevitable and we need to be prepared.

Today, we announced the launch of FLOSYS, a new real time tool that will help our business better understand the environmental performance of the aircraft we provide a service to.

If a tree falls in a forest with no-one there, does it make a sound? In aviation, we can’t deny the existence of something just because we aren’t there to hear or see it. We need to act on our instincts and feedback.

Thank you to everyone who completed our blog survey. We had hundreds of replies which will help us to provide more of the type of blogs our readers want to see, in their preferred formats and covering the most popular subjects. The results are in!

Earlier this week we opened our headquarters for the Middle East, with a permanent office in Dubai. To mark the occasion, a number of our senior executives met with Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Executive Chairman of Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, to discuss some of the most aviation opportunities and challenges facing the Gulf.

Our trials of a new X Band radar to mitigate the effects of wind turbines at airports have understandably excited the airport community. A debate has sparked up between different members of the industry, including a few questions that I want to take this opportunity to answer.