Cathay Pacific Airways plans to finish equipping its entire fleet of Boeing 747-400s with future-air-navigation system (FANS-1) equipment by March and hopes to be operating on the first communications, navigation and surveillance/air-traffic-management (CNS/ATM) route across the northern Pacific Ocean by the end of the year.
The Hong Kong airline has so far retrofitted 18 of its 21 747-400s with the Boeing FANS-1 package, including two freighter aircraft. All of the carrier's 747-400 crews have already completed a simulator and audio-visual training session and are now FANS-1-qualified.
Work includes equipping the aircraft with Rockwell-Collins SAT 906 satellite-communications equipment, dual global-positioning system avionics, an airborne-communications addressing and reporting system (ACARS) and printer, as well as modifying the 747's display and flight-management software.
"We have the aircraft equipped and ready to go and hope to operate on the first transpacific route this year," says Cathay Pacific international operations manager Paul Horsting.
The Informal South Pacific Air-Traffic-Services Co-ordinating Group is due to meet shortly to discuss reducing lateral and longitudinal separation on route R220 across the northern Pacific, from 185km to 95km (100nm to 50nm), and opening up flexi-routes to the south for FANS-1-equipped aircraft. The move is intended to reduce existing traffic congestion for aircraft which are to join R220 from Los Angeles and San Francisco in California.
Cathay is among other airlines pushing for the opening of route B330 from Hong Kong to Europe for CNS/ATM traffic via north-west China and Russia. A second CNS/ATM route from Bangkok would join B330 over Urumqi.
The opening of the transpacific and European routes "-could run in parallel," says International Air Transport Association regional technical director Tony Laven, who adds: "We're probably looking at nine months from here."
Cathay, in the meantime, plans to begin using the ACARS for routine data-transmission position reports to Hong Kong from over the South China Sea. The move coincides with the planned opening of two new routes from Singapore.
Hong Kong's Civil Aviation Department has been operating an interim automatic-dependent-surveillance system from CAE and conducting tracking and controller pilot datalink communication trials since July 1996. Tests have extended beyond Hong Kong's flight-information region to a distance of some 4,320km.
Source: Flight International
