Sesame boss pledges to speed up decision making, resorting to majority voting, if necessary
The executive committee of the newly created Single European Sky air traffic management masterplan for Europe (Sesame) project will resort to majority voting to force through contentious issues involving airspace users, airports and manufacturers during the two-year definition phase of the project.
Olaf Dlugi, chairman of the Sesame executive committee, says his team will seek consensus among the project’s current 29 partners, but adds that “for too long air navigation service providers [ANSP], airlines and manufacturers have blamed each other, so now is a good time to get them all together and solve problems”. He says a vote will be taken to close decisions, citing bureaucratic processes at Eurocontrol, where consensus is mandatory, as something to be avoided. “In Eurocontrol over the decades, processes have emerged that split the ANSPs from the daily work of the users,” he says.
The European Commission and Eurocontrol officially launched Sesame at the show, pledging €25 million ($31.4 million) each to fund the definition phase. There are seven airspace users, including Lufthansa, nine ANSPs, five airports and seven equipment manufacturers included in the executive committee. The Thales Avionics/EADS/Airbus consortium Air Traffic Alliance will lead efforts to define common standards for ATM requirements until 2020. EC transport commissioner Jacques Barrot says a deal signed at the show with US Federal Aviation Administration administrator Marion Blakey to work towards interoperable standards will ensure any future technology standards will be compatible.
Thales ATM director Lionnel Wonneberger says the Global Interoperabiity Project, on which Thales is working with Boeing to define future US air navigation standards, will be crucial to this effort.
Source: Flight International
