Smarter and more collaborative working is the best way to be efficient and ensure we can be sustainable as an industry.

This is the third annual World ATM Congress trade show and we’re looking forward to welcoming delegates onto our stand to talk with our team and watch a range of technical demonstrations, as well as participate in more light hearted activities in the form of refreshments and games.

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.

As airlines work hard to reduce their fuel burn and CO2 emissions, we at NATS have also been coming up with ways to help, using air traffic control initiatives to play our part.

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.

Martin Clifford, easyJet Base Captain at Bristol, as guest blogger, shares his thoughts about Continuous Descent Operations (CDO), which involves teamwork between the Tower, the Airport and easyJet.

One of the most important ways in which NATS seeks to help reduce the environmental impact of aviation is through the Single European Sky ATM Research programme (SESAR). SESAR brings together stakeholders from across the European aviation industry to help develop and deploy new technologies and procedures that can improve the performance of European air traffic management (ATM).

One of the SESAR projects we have led, called TOPFLIGHT, has now been long-listed for a World Responsible Tourism Award in the Best Aviation Programme for Carbon Reduction category.

Aviation Noise is by far the most emotive topic around airport expansion, where battle lines are drawn in the form of noise contours, and entrenched positions on Government policy and residents’ rights to peace and quiet have resulted in a stalemate.

During 2013 we enabled savings of 59,000 tonnes of fuel, thereby avoiding 190,000 tonnes of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere. It was our best ever year ever in terms of savings.