Nice Côte d’Azur Airport in France has credited the expertise and collaboration of teams from RESA and ATRiCS with getting its A-CDM (airport collaborative decision making) system approved by EUROCONTROL in record time.
“This approval marks the end of an intense, exciting period of work during which our suppliers tackled a host of challenges. We now have a comprehensive, stable, reliable and scalable solution for optimising all our operations,” said Franck Goldnadel, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Aéroports de la Côte d’Azur. “In concrete terms, it will enable us to cut taxiing and queuing times at runways, which in turn will cut greenhouse gas emissions for both those flight phases. More generally speaking, the A-CDM system reasserts our firm place at the heart of European airspace and the future of air travel, which will be all about combining economic and environmental performance,” he added.
The airport’s INFOPAX AODB (Airport Operational Data Base) system had already been up and running for several years. The tool centralises, processes and shares information required to manage the airport’s flights and related resources (aircraft parking, boarding gates, check-in desks). RESA has now upgraded the system by integrating A-CDM. This was achieved by developing an interface that communicates continuously with the ATRiCS solution in order to send data that is essential for CDM.
As a result of this upgrade all ground operations can be scheduled smoothly, from the moment the aircraft arrives until it departs again, with the goal of predicting its take-off time as accurately as possible. The A-CDM approval also marks a new era for a data exchange solution that RESA has already been running for several years with EUROCONTROL. The first level involved setting up a connection with the CFMU – in other words, one-way receipt of messages containing flight data from EUROCONTROL. The second, known as advanced ATC Tower, added a function enabling the airport to send messages to EUROCONTROL about target take-off times. The third level, Full A-CDM, includes an information exchange portal for all airport partners: ATC, the airport operator, ground handlers and airlines.
Commenting on how the RESA A-CDM system has made Nice the fourth French airport to obtain EUROCONTROL approval, Florian Reischek, RESA Product Director, said: “The synergy between teams from RESA, Nice Airport and ATRiCS was an incredible driver for all the people involved in this project… We are extremely proud of this and would like to extend our sincere thanks to everyone who took part.”
ATRiCS, meanwhile, worked on the development and implementation of an automated tool called Collaborative Pre-Departure Sequencing System. This system brings together all the data provided by the INFOPAX AODB system, its purpose being to continuously plan and calculate flight take-off times based on various local and European constraints (runway capacity, congestion in the skies etc). Ultimately this has provided those responsible for managing air traffic with better means of predicting and anticipating flights.
Having set up the Advanced ACT-Tower developed by RESA in December 2016, then implemented Full A-CDM in November 2019, Nice Airport obtained EUROCONTROL approval in September 2020. The project was co-funded by the European Union, the Direction des Services de la Navigation aérienne (France’s air traffic control agency, the DSNA) and Nice Côte d’Azur Airport.
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