DAVID LEARMOUNT / LONDON
Europe is preparing to impose datalink on airlines to ensure it has the tools to enhance capacity in its skies
Eurocontrol is to mandate aircraft and ground equipage to enable controller/pilot datalink communication (CPDLC), and in 2004 will publish the draft notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM).
According to Eurocontrol's Link 2000+ programme manager, Alex Wandels, its air traffic management (ATM) capacity - which is keeping almost in line with traffic growth - will start to drop rapidly below the increasing demand from 2006. Eurocontrol sees CPDLC as one of the essential tools in its strategy for improving the efficiency and capacity of ATM centres in the Eurocontrol area.
Wandels describes the approach to the mandate as "two carrots and a stick": Eurocontrol is offering attractive financial inducements to airlines to persuade many to equip their aircraft well before the mandate comes into force for new aircraft in 2009. Meanwhile, the air traffic control centre (ACC) at Maastricht, Netherlands is already equipped with controller interfaces for handling CPDLC, and by 2006 the ACCs at Karlsruhe (Germany), Madrid and Rome will also be equipped to VHF datalink mode 2 (VDL-2) standards, which is the Link 2000+ programme standard.
Other ACCs in the core area will have to equip by 2009. When 75% of aircraft are equipped, it will provide a 20% boost to system traffic capacity, estimates Wandels, which is the same advantage derived by the recent introduction of reduced vertical separation minima.
Meanwhile, airlines based in busy areas where the old ACARS (airline communications addressing and reporting system) VHF datalink - used for operations, maintenance and management messages - is reaching capacity, have another motive for changing to VDL-2: it has 10 times the ACARS capacity and far more than is needed for CPDLC in the forseeable future.
Source: Flight International
