Regional Gateway editor Chloë Greenbank summarises the latest happenings across airports serving business, regional and low-fare routes.
Every year on Christmas Eve Santa Claus sets off from Lapland travelling an estimated 510,000,00 km in one night – approximately 1,800 miles per second. It’s a journey that requires precision planning and efficiently managed airspace.
So Santa, for one, will be delighted with this week’s news that members of the SESAR Deployment Alliance – which includes airspace users, airports and Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) – and the EUROCONTROL Network Manager are proposing a new partnership to manage the modernisation and digitalisation of a sustainable European Air Traffic Management (ATM) system.
“With an ongoing capacity crunch causing air traffic flow management delays that are 53% above those of 2017, it is crucial to accelerate the deployment of new technologies that can modernise and digitalise air traffic management,” commented Eamonn Brennan, director general of EUROCONTROL. He added that this new partnership “is the right way forward.”
Meanwhile, and following almost two years of collaboration on terrestrial surveillance, the Agency for Aerial Navigation Safety in Africa and Madagascar (ASECNA) and Aireon (the global air traffic surveillance company) have concluded the use of space-based ADS-B for surveillance services. The agreement covers 16.1 million square kilometres within the six Flight Information Regions (FIRs) of Antananarivo, Brazzaville, Dakar Terrestrial, Dakar Oceanic, N’djamena and Niamey.
A major benefit of expanding ATS surveillance across key oceanic airspaces in Africa is that it will enable ASECNA to “partner more easily with regional ANSPs,” exclaimed Mohamed Moussa, director general of ASECNA.
So, you’d better be good for goodness sake because with these latest announcements and improvements in airspace management it’s safe to say ‘Santa Claus is coming to town!’
On that note I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support this year and to wish you all happy holidays and a safe and prosperous 2020. The next Regional Gateway newsletter will be sent on 9 January, but you can still follow us online and on social media until then. In the meantime my parting gift for 2019 is the latest issue of Regional Gateway magazine. If you’re not already subscribed then click on the link below to access your complimentary copy.
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