Last month I was at the International Airport Summit in Berlin, where one theme cut through almost every discussion, panel and product demo: predictability, not performance is now what airports care most about.

This year we have made significant strides towards developing NATS OpenAir as the UK-wide digital data infrastructure to enable the safe and efficient integration of crewed and uncrewed aircraft in shared airspace. The next step will see us working with Airways New Zealand.

Last week, our Young Professionals’ Network had the opportunity to represent NATS at the Dubai Airshow.From meeting inspiring peers from the Dubai Air Navigation Service Youth Council to presenting to senior leaders, the week offered a fantastic chance for us as a network to strengthen global connections and highlight the power of collaboration.

Earlier this year, we rolled out the Air Traffic Management Portal, ATM-P for short, a cutting-edge platform designed to enhance collaboration between the Flow Management Team at NATS, who ensure airspace sector capacity is safely balanced with demand.

At this week’s Airlines 2025 event, I joined colleagues from across the sector to discuss capacity and resilience in UK aviation. It highlighted a simple truth: growth alone will not suffice for passengers — resilience must grow alongside capacity. That’s the standard the industry is aiming for, and it’s how the UK will remain competitive.

In aviation, where precision, safety and efficiency are paramount, data can have an ever-increasing positive impact as we address the many challenges facing our rapidly evolving industry. That was the focus of ‘Analytics in Aviation 2025’, an internal conference that brought together more than 100 people from across NATS to hear customers, colleagues and partner organisations discuss how data, AI and advanced analytics are shaping the future of aviation.

At NATS, we believe in that same spirit of collaboration. Take Intelligent Approach as an example. It owes its origins to collaboration: NATS, Leidos, Heathrow, Think, Eurocontrol, SESAR. Each partner brought something unique to the table, and together, we have created something transformative.

This month’s episode of Altitude, recorded on the floor of the DroneX conference in London, was about moving from innovation to integration — how drones are changing the way we live in exciting ways along, together with and a desire to see an acceleration away from trials towards more routine operations.

For the past seven years Aberdeen has been at the forefront of our work to enable safe beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations in segregated airspace. What has happened so far – and what are the future plans?

Pairwise is the latest example of how Intelligent Approach is helping airports to make the absolute most out of their available runways, but we’re also working on some other developments on the longer-term horizon. The one I’m most excited about is called Curved Approach.