DAVID LEARMOUNT / LONDON
Providers in Germany, Spain and the UK are leading a push for interoperability
Future European air traffic management (ATM) interoperability is to be boosted this week as the UK's National Air Traffic Services (NATS) joins Germany and Spain in a programme to develop a new flight data processing (FDP) system.
This is part of Eurocontrol's Interoperability Through European Collaboration (ITEC) programme, in which NATS is upgrading its role from consultancy to full membership, says NATS chief executive Richard Everitt.
Eurocontrol's Maastricht air traffic control centre (ATCC), which controls the upper airspace over parts of Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, is also taking an active interest in the new FDP development, and the European Commission has contributed €16 million ($17 million) towards development costs - with more promised if other ATM providers join the programme - on the grounds that it furthers progress towards a single European sky. Interoperability is crucial because at the moment Eurocontrol contains 34 member countries that operate 68 ATCCs with 19 hardware systems running 30 programming languages.
Everitt says NATS is putting £4 million into FDP development, working with Spanish ATM provider AENA and Madrid-based information technology company Indra. Germany and the UK have some of the densest and most complex traffic systems in Europe, so when the FDP has been developed it will be able to handle the continent's most demanding airspace, he adds.
The system will give controllers new ATM tools such as medium-range conflict alert and conflict resolution, and NATS expects to deploy the FDP first in its New Prestwick Centre (NPC), in Scotland, when it opens in the 2008-9 low traffic season. NATS has, however, suspended its competitive procurement process for the NPC while it assesses the potential benefits expected from multinational collaboration, in terms of the increased negotiating leverage that could be gained, says Everitt. The ATCC at Swanwick in the south of England will migrate to the new FDP system in 2012, he says.
Meanwhile, NATS has just signed a £75 million deal with Raytheon Systems for replacement primary/secondary radars to be installed during the next 10 years throughout the UK.
The new radar has been developed to a common European specification, says NATS. It is Mode S-enabled for migration to the improved datalink starting in the busiest airspace sectors when NATS has completed its assessment of how to use the data and process it in its existing FDP system.
Source: Flight International
