Ian Sheppard/LONDON
THE UK National Air Traffic Services (NATS) faces another embarrassing delay in upgrading its ageing infrastructure, with warnings that it will have to extend the deadline on completing a new oceanic air traffic control centre within only months of work starting.
Design work on the centre, known as the Flight Data Processing System (FDPS2), began in June with award of a contract to US company EDS. NATS says it has now had to put "timescales under review" for the three-year project after concluding that it "-is more complex than thought". Delays could be as much as 18 months.
The centre will provide transatlantic traffic with a comprehensive pseudo radar environment based on Automatic Dependent Surveillance (ADS). It is to be co-located with the proposed £200 million ($333 million) New Scottish Centre (NSC), which will replace the existing Scottish Air Traffic Control Centre at Prestwick in 2003. NATS says that any delay in the FDPS2 will not affect the NSC.
The latest delay comes after a UK Government Select Committee report published earlier this month lambasted NATS and contractor Lockheed Martin Mission Systems for protracted software delays with the £350 million New En Route Centre (NERC) at Swanwick, England.
EDS denies comparisons with the Nerc, saying that work to date has been only to "firm up the specification".
Source: Flight International
