Julian Moxon/BUDAPEST
Hungary has inaugurated its new £40 million ($62 million) air traffic control centre at Budapest's Ferihegy Airport as pressure mounts for the creation of a "seamless" central European ATC area in the region.
The Matias ATC centre, supplied by Thomson Airsys, has opened a year later than planned after delays caused by the merger between Thomson-CSF and Siemens' ATC businesses. Specification changes for the Eurocat 2000 system are also blamed.
The system is being introduced in two phases: the first, with limited capability, became operational in December 1999; the second, with an improved human system interface, will start in May 2002.
Meanwhile, the seven-nation initiative for a single Maastricht-style upper airspace region in central Europe is gathering pace.
Eurocontrol is about to carry out a cost-benefit analysis of the Central European Air Traffic Services (CEATS) plan, which aims to bring together Austria, Hungary, northern Italy, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Croatia in a single upper airspace region. This will identify potential savings in developing a single ATC system in an area which is experiencing 10% annual traffic growth. The CEATS area will be adjacent to the multinational Maastricht upper airspace region, enabling direct routings between destinations in 40% of Europe.
In another move, a meeting of senior CEATS civil and military officials is planned on 4 April. Civil/military airspace co-ordination is seen as one of the major challenges, requiring NATO and non-NATO members to submit to one authority.
CEATS is planned for limited operation in 2007, but it is expected to be 2010 before the region will achieve unified control above 28,500ft (8,700m).
Source: Flight International
