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.

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?

The NAMEUR Task Force arrives in Dublin, Ireland for the event which runs from 29th September to 1st October 2015, with NATS once again co-chairing alongside United Airlines.

As students everywhere are returning to, or starting, university or college, they’ll be taking the first steps on their career ladder. For planning placement years, organising apprenticeships or looking for work as graduates there are lots of options out there.

Friday 24th July was expected to be the busiest day of the year. Rather than just looking at statistics for the day we thought it would be interesting to put some faces to those who flew on #FlyFriday.

From sports such as Formula 1 using real-time data to analyse performance and devise strategy through to retail and loyalty cards using big data sets to provide better experiences and offers for their customers, getting your hands on good data and using it effectively is at the heart of many of today’s industries. Real-time big data is on its way to ATM and the sooner we can make it happen, the better.

A good proportion of us will take to the skies over the next few months to reach our holiday destinations and will expect the flight to and from your paradise to be without drama.

In the world of air traffic control, we have that same desire and work particularly hard to realise that expectation, even with growing air traffic levels and increased demand.