Flying is one of the safest ways to travel, with the vast majority of us never experiencing anything other than a straightforward journey. However, in the unlikely event of something going wrong we’re all glad for the skill and training of the professionals whose job it is to look after us.

It will be interesting to see how the RPAS industry evolves in the coming years and what regulatory framework emerges around “drones”. The UK government has set out an ambitious strategy that wants to see the full integration of unmanned and manned aircraft by 2020, so the next few years are sure to be very exciting.

SESAR is showcasing its success stories in a number of critical areas, such as enabling greener aviation, increasing connectivity and mobility, advancing the digitalisation and virtualisation of ATM, and ensuring the safe integration of new types of aircraft, such as unmanned aircraft.

This week Europe’s aviation community gather for the European Commission-sponsored Aerodays conference. It’s a major event that only takes place once every few years to develop innovative concepts and technologies that will help ensure the aviation can grow, safely and sustainably, and to discuss emerging issues.

A record attendance was recorded at the 26th Bi-Annual North American/European Air Traffic Flow Management Task Force (NAMEUR) Meeting in Dublin, Ireland. Work has already started on the next meeting, NAMEUR/27 which is planned for late April 2016 in Miami, USA and which will be hosted by IATA.

Next week a major European aviation conference comes to London. Aerodays is the European Commission’s flagship event in aviation research and development.

The aviation connection to the Shetland Islands is vital, as there are only two ways of getting there; by ‘plane or by boat. The boat option requires a 12 or 14 hour overnight journey to/from Aberdeen, so the flight option is much quicker for those wanting to make the trip to mainland UK.

A few weeks ago NATS launched a new report from Oxford Economics, on the economic benefits of improvements to Middle East air traffic control. People from all over the world took part in a live debate, We received a number of questions, some of which I’ve addressed in my latest blog.

As with many other critical safety-based services, ATC provides a service that must be delivered 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, so will technology ever replace the more advanced aspects of the human?

Visitors are invited to a number of technical demonstrations hosted by our experts on the following topics: Cross Border Arrival Management (XMAN), Time Based Separation (TBS), Airport Capacity Management (ACM) and Flight Optimisation System (FloSys).