On behalf of everyone in VATSIM UK, let me wish all of our community a happy and healthy Christmas and prosperous and enjoyable 2022!

As 2021 draws to a close, we reflect on another turbulent and challenging year outside of the network. While many of us had a return towards normality in the summer and autumn, we have seen widespread distruption for many celebrating with friends and family this week. Additionally, we have the prospect of a new year which is likely to bring new restrictions across many parts of the world, causing concerns for everyone but especially those of us in education, healthcare, hospitality and of course in the travel industry. We know that many of you will be impacted financially, educationally or from a health perspective during the next weeks and months.

With this in mind, we especially acknowlege the tremendous contribution to the division made by all of our volunteers during 2021 with this situation in the background. With hundreds of people who have made thousands of contributions to our division in this year, every single one of these incrementally moves us forward in our ambitions. On behalf of the whole staff team, I thank you for your time, energy, creativity and enthusiasm for helping us with this. To the staff team, I also thank you for continued efforts to run the division's activities together with your teams and their contributors. I know that enthusiasm and time has waxed and waned for everyone over the last year; I really hope that for each of you, the final weeks of the year can be dedicated to some time offline for recharge and a refresh. This is long overdue for many of us, and necessary to be able to continue to work on the exciting and interesting projects that will come our way in 2022.

To everyone, I ask that you have some patience if things take some time to be handled during the next 10 days or so while some of our teams are taking time out with friends and family. For all of you in our community, we look forward to meeting each other again online in the new year, when there will no doubt be many fun and interesting sessions spent together doing the hobby that underpins this community.

Best wishes,

Chris.