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.

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.

The #NATS365 hashtag has been used on different social media platforms since September 2014 as a means of sharing some of our favourite pictures.

Do you have a picture you would like to share with us? If so please feel free to contact me as I am always looking for more aviation related images to share with people.

There is one group of people that are often over looked when thinking about those working during the festive season; that of air traffic controllers.

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.

Each year the Association of European Airlines (AEA) brings together the leaders of its member airlines to discuss major issues facing the aviation industry. Last week, given NATS’ role as a strategic partner of AEA, Andy Shand, General Manager of Customer Affairs and I attended their 2014 Leadership Summit.

We spoke to Yaquob Al Mahruqi, an aviation systems engineer, about his time in the UK and what difference his new ‘Air Traffic Safety Electronic Personnel’ qualification will mean for him.

With the launch of #NATS365 today, Monday 1st September, we will be sharing a photo each day for a year to help provide a greater insight into various different aspects and areas of our business.

The Icelandic Met Office currently has an ‘Orange’ risk warning over Bárdarbunga volcano and we thought it would be useful to set out in clear steps the impact it might have on UK aviation.