Air traffic control, airline and military operation staff and pilots from both sides of the North Atlantic attended the recent 27th NAMEUR Meeting, which I co-chaired along with Tobin Miller from American Airlines. NAMEUR focuses on how flights both enter and leave the North Atlantic airspace.

We have just published the results of our annual customer survey where airlines from across the world get their chance to review the service they’ve receive from NATS over the past 12 months.

Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) are embedded within the skills of people at NATS and keep our operation ticking.

One of the questions we’re being increasingly asked by our followers on social media is around why some long haul flights appear to be taking indirect routes to their destinations.

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.

At Prestwick the FISOs record a fair amount of information on our handwritten FIR strips. We try to note down on the flight strip all the relevant information on the first call with an aircraft.

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.

Any company’s most important asset is its people, and NATS is no exception. People are our lynchpin in the safe and efficient management of our increasingly busy skies and advances in technological developments across the air traffic management (ATM) industry.

Flying is one of the safest forms of transport; emergencies are rare. But if and when situations do occur, pilots and air traffic controllers have the skills and training to handle them.

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?