Hungary expects to be the first former Warsaw Pact country - and one of the first in Europe - to achieve totally integrated civil/military airspace when it opens its new Budapest air-traffic-control (ATC) centre on 1 September.
The Mathias centre, near Budapest's Ferihegy Airport, is designed to accommodate civil and military air-traffic controllers in the same room - the first time that such a centre has enabled activities between the two to be totally co-ordinated. One of the aims is to increase the capacity of Hungary's limited airspace, which has been forced to handle up to three times as much traffic, because of the Bosnian conflict. Although the fighting has ceased, there is still a "no-fly zone" in operation.
The scheme is based on existing civil/military co-ordination programmes in Denmark and Germany, but its introduction has overcome formidable obstacles presented by Hungary's former Soviet-dominated military system, which used Russian ATC practices. A senior Hungarian colonel says: "We all understood something had to change-but, after 40 years of the old routines, it was difficult to establish just how."
Co-operation will be organised at three levels - strategic/political, pre-tactical and tactical. Military activities will be accommodated according to the international situation, and will take into account Hungary's forthcoming membership of NATO, and the requirement for common military exercises.
A senior NATO official, David Facey, formerly chairman of the Committee for European Airspace Co-ordination, said at a seminar in Budapest in September 1996 that the reduction of military movements following the end of the Cold War should limit the amount of airspace needing to be reserved for training, although he points out that training for peacekeeping can actually "-require more, rather than less, airspace".
He suggests co-ordinating military requirements through the Brussels-based Eurocontrol central-flow-management unit in the same way that civil operators do.
Source: Flight International