Eurocontrol has launched a major initiative in a bid to revitalise European efforts to develop an advanced air-traffic- management (ATM) system for the next century.
The newly established Air Traffic Management 2000+ strategy board met representatives of the aviation industry at the Eurocontrol headquarters in Brussels on 7 November in an effort to get a concensus on how to proceed with a project which chairman Val Eggers describes as an "extremely important and urgent development".
The initiative stems from the meeting of European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC) transport ministers in February which called for development of a comprehensive "gate-to- gate" ATM strategy for the next century.
Besides air-traffic-control representatives Eggers invited airlines, airports, military bodies, aircraft manufacturers, service providers and numerous other bodies. "The hope is to find a real concensus", he says. "We need to stop the arguing and get on with the job".
The strategy board will establish a smaller executive committe of around 20 people to work on specific elements of the ATM plan to arrive at what Eggers calls a "a collective strategy" for presentation to an ECAC ministers meeting in April 1999, when the overall ATM2000+ initiative will be approved.
The committee has a tough task, with objections from the airline industry to a major element of ATM2000+, the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System (EGNOS) complement to the global-navigation-satellite system. It claims that EGNOS work should be "stopped" because the system will provide "zero benefits" to airspace users, claiming also that it will be required to pay 100% of the costs of using the system, which will be available to non-aviation users as well.
Source: Flight International