Paul Lewis/SINGAPORE
The Asia-Pacific region has been at the forefront of promoting the new communications, navigation and surveillance/air-traffic-management (CNS/ ATM) system since the concept emerged in 1983. These efforts will begin to bear fruit in 1998, with the planned opening and start of trials on key new routes between Asia, Europe and the USA.
Spearheading the big push has been the International Air Transport Association's (IATA) Asia-Pacific regional co-ordinating group (RCG). The body, one of three in the world, brings together IATA's Singapore-based Regional Technical Office and heavyweight representatives from some 15 carriers, including Cathay Pacific Airways, Japan Airlines, Qantas and United Airlines, as well as non-Asian airspace users, such as British Airways and KLM.
"We work together to ensure that we speak with one voice, and the results have been very productive over the last few years and to the benefit of all airlines," says Paul Horsting, Cathay Pacific international operations manager and RCG chairman.
FANS INVOLVEMENT
The group has been deeply involved with the Future Air Navigation System (FANS) concept since the start of the first South Pacific engineering trials in 1990 and was the first to adopt IATA's "user-driven plan for CNS/ATM transition and implementation".
A combination of geographical, economical and technical considerations have served to whet Asia's appetite for CNS/ATM. The region is home to 57% of the world's population, increasingly large numbers of whom have the wherewithal to fly. In the decade up to 1995, scheduled Asia-Pacific domestic and international traffic tripled, to 386 million passengers, and this is expected to more than double over the next ten years.
This in turn has generated a boom in airport-construction projects. Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Seoul will shortly each be commissioning new airports, with an ultimate build-out capacity of 80-100 million passengers a year. At the same time, there are major terminal- and runway-expansion works under way at Bangkok, Singapore and Tokyo Narita airports.
While Asia's airport infrastructure appears well positioned to cope with the continuing high rates of air-transport growth, air-traffic-control services are straining to keep pace. "Airport capacity is beginning to outstrip airspace. That is why CNS/ATM is becoming so important," says Tony Laven, IATA Asia-Pacific technical director and RCG secretary.
Vast expanses of the region are served either by antiquated and inadequate conventional radar and voice-driven ATM systems, such as in the Russian Far East, or there is simply no coverage. CNS/ATM offers an affordable technological leaps over conventional terrestrial systems for countries such as China, home to vast tracts of underdeveloped territory, as well as the region's smaller cash-strapped nations, such as Myanmar.
On the user front, Asia-Pacific carriers dominate the more than 300 orders placed for Boeing's 747-400 FANS-1 avionics package. Cathay, Qantas and Singapore have each kitted out their entire -400 fleets with the system, representing some 76 aircraft in total. They will be joined by Boeing 777s, 767s and MD-11s and FANS-A equipped Airbus A340/330s by the end of 1998.
The other key ingredient to the RCG's success in pressing ahead with CNS/ATM implementation has been its ability to bridge the many political rifts which rupture Asia. Among the IATA regional office's past successes was the brokering of a three-way agreement between the warring factions in Afghanistan, opening a safe passage for international traffic through the Wakhan corridor.
More recently, it has assisted the International Civil Aviation Organisation's (ICAO) Bangkok office in the seemingly impossible task of getting North and South Korean negotiators to agree to the planned opening of the Pyongyang flight-information region (FIR). Korean Airlines will be among the five international carriers scheduled to conduct trials through North Korean airspace from 1 March.
These efforts will begin paying dividends in 1998, with the planned launch of CNS/ATM routes from Asia over the North Pole, across the central Pacific to North America and to Europe, the Middle East and southern Africa. The network will eventually extend to Australia and South America, and improvements made to the Russian Far East and Trans-Siberian routes.
NEW POLAR ROUTES
The opening of proposed new polar routes has been tentatively set for the end of 1998, although the RCG is pushing to get going even sooner. "We would hope they can start before that-this would then support operations from North America to Asia over the North Pole, primarily between New York and Hong Kong," explains Laven.
By creating up to a 1,110km (600nm) random polar envelope either side of the "great circle", flight planners will in future be able to plot optimum courses, harnessing prevailing high-speed jetstreams for a tailwind component. Minimum flight time for westbound traffic would be achieved by flying north of the circle and vice versa for eastbound aircraft.
Aside from making non-stop 747-400 flights from Hong Kong to the US East Coast a commercial reality for the first time, it would offer major savings and improvements in performance for airlines operating to China, Japan and South Korea. "If we can cut not only direct operating costs, but carry more revenue-earning payload, this will open up new city pairs," suggest Horsting.
Many of the essential segments needed for the route to open are now falling into place, including new Sino-Russian border entry/exit points and the installation of compliant CNS/ATM equipment in China and Mongolia. The biggest stumbling block which could still cause delay is the Russian Far East, through which the new polar routes will have to pass.
"Things have been made difficult by the break-up of the Soviet Union," concedes Laven. "In years gone by, Russia had a unified air-traffic-services system, run and controlled from Moscow, but that is not the case today. There are now the federal aviation authority, state co-operation for ATM and individual regions that provide air-traffic services, all of which need to be co-ordinated with."
To give more clout to the existing working-level Russia/America Co-ordinating Group for Air Traffic, a new high-level policy group is to be formed. The ICAO Informal Trans-Asia Cross Polar Routes Steering Group will meet in early 1998, in an effort not only to speed up progress on the new routes, but to make revisions to the east-west Trans-Siberian routes between Japan and Europe and Far East/ Kamchatka routes to the US West Coast.
Also pencilled in for a late-1998 start will be the long-awaited launch of a new route from Singapore/Bangkok to Europe, via Urumqi in China and the Central Asian states. "This all depends on the speed at which China moves ahead, but I would say towards the end of 1998 for the commencement of trials and operational use all in one fell swoop," predicts Laven.
While CNS/ATM ground equipment in Russia and Kazakhstan is not seen as essential for the implementation of the new route, it is a prerequisite in China if FANS-1 equipped aircraft are to comply with RNP-4 (required navigation performance) over the critical Tibetan Plateau. The higher degree of navigation accuracy is needed to ensure that aircraft can descend safely into valleys in the event of cabin decompression.
There are also plans to extend a trunk off the new Asia-Europe route on from Kunming and into Hong Kong. The new routes will permit traffic from South-East Asia and Hong Kong to fly to Europe, bypassing the highly congested Calcutta corridor. At peak times, between 23 and 38 aircraft an hour are being squeezed through the Indian FIR en route between Europe and Asia, resulting in some $100 million-worth of delays a year.
CNS/ATM ROUTE TO INDIA
Long-standing plans also exist to open a CNS/ATM route from South-East Asia across the Bay of Bengal to Bhubaneshwar, south of Calcutta. This would then be extended on through Pakistan, Iran and Turkey, and eventually into Europe. The Iranian authorities are now in the process of purchasing a CNS/ATM workstation, which, once installed, should clear the way for 75km longitudinal separation all the way through to Turkey by the end of 1998.
Elsewhere, work is progressing on establishing a CNS/ATM route from Asia to Mauritius and South Africa, with the ICAO Indian Ocean Air Traffic Services Co-ordinating Group due to convene in Madagascar in mid-1998 to discuss the matter. South Africa has acquired a workstation and is already conducting full FANS trials with Cathay between Hong Kong and Johannesburg. "We hope to make it an operational route later this year," says Horsting.
There are also plans to extend trials from South Africa to Australia and, eventually, South America. Qantas is already operating random routes across the southern Indian Ocean, but now relies on conventional HF radio rather than CNS/ATM equipment. Other developments in the pipeline for 1998 include the first FANS route across the central/ north Pacific from Hong Kong to Los Angeles.
"Substantial progress is changing the face of civil aviation and the infrastructural developments to support that change are going to happen. It's all a matter of getting it co-ordinated," concludes a confident Laven.
Source: Flight International
