The Royal Aeronautical Society has been honouring outstanding achievers in the global aerospace industry since 1909 when Wilbur and Orville Wright came to London to receive the Society's first Gold Medal. In the years that have followed, honouring world aerospace achievers has become a permanent tradition of the Society. Included among these awards are the written paper prizes.

The Royal Aeronautical Society Written Paper Prizes are awarded annually for the best papers published in The Aeronautical Journal by the Society during the previous calendar year. Awards can be conferred at Gold, Silver or Bronze level. The Written Paper Prizes are presented following the approval of the Council of the Royal Aeronautical Society on the basis of recommendations from the RAeS Medals & Awards Committee, supported by the Editor-in-Chief of The Aeronautical Journal. The Society recognises the achievements, innovation and excellence of both individual and multiple authors.

The nominations received for the 2015 Awards were highly competitive and on behalf of the RAeS Council, the Medals and Awards Committee are very pleased to announce the winners as:

The 2015 Gold Written Paper Prize goes to Dr Askin Isikveren, Dr Arne Seitz, Mr Julian Bijewitz, Mr Artur Mirzoyan, Mr Alik Isyanov, Mr Richard Grenon, Mr Olivier Atinault, Mr Jean-Luc Godard and Dr Stefan Stückl for their paper entitled ‘Distributed propulsion and ultra-high by-pass rotor study at aircraft level’, published in the November 2015 issue of The Aeronautical Journal, Vol 119, No 1221, pp 1327–1376.

Dr Rodrigo Andrés Jimenez Manzanera and Professor Howard Smith receive a Silver Written Paper Prize for their papers entitled ‘Flight in nature I: Take-off in animal flyers,’ and ‘Flight in nature II: How animal flyers land,’ both published in the March 2015 issue of The Aeronautical Journal, Vol 119, No 1213, pp 257–299.

Captain Stefan Poprawa FRAeS receives a 2015 Silver Written Paper Prize for his paper entitled ‘Maintenance test flying – an accident waiting to happen?’, published in the June 2015 issue of The Aeronautical Journal, Vol 119, No 1216, pp 781–790.

Dr Wolfgang Schuster receives a 2015 Bronze Written Paper Prize for his paper entitled ‘Trajectory prediction for future air traffic management – complex manoeuvres and taxiing.’ This paper appeared in the February 2015 issue of The Aeronautical Journal, Vol 119, No 1212, pp 121–143.

Ms Jessica Jones and Professor Carlos Cesnik FRAeS receive a Bronze Written Paper Prize for their paper entitled ‘Preliminary flight test correlations of the X-HALE aeroelastic experiment.’, published in the July 2015 issue of The Aeronautical Journal, Vol 119, No 1217, pp 855–870.

Dr Nicholas Rowell, Dr Martin Dunstan, Professor Steve Parkes, Dr Jesús Gil-Fernández, Ms Irene Huertas and S Salehi receive a 2015 Bronze Written Paper Prize for their paper on ‘Autonomous visual recognition of known surface landmarks for optical navigation around asteroids,’ published in the October 2015 issue of The Aeronautical Journal, Vol 119, No 1220, pp 1193–1222.