Pilots and air traffic controllers at the Netherlands Maastricht centre who have been using the experimental datalink system for five years "are happy and keen to use it", says Eurocontrol's Paul Conroy, a former controller monitoring datalink operations implementation. Over the period, Maastricht has handled 10,000 successful controller-pilot datalink communications (CPDLC) flights operated by 11 airlines using seven types of aircraft.
Datalink can reduce voice clutter considerably, says Conroy, pointing out that a third of all calls were "hello or goodbye" handovers. Datalink today, however, can only handle strategic messages, he says. It is not fast enough to handle tactical messages or for use in terminal airspace - the average dialogue completion time has been 49s.
From April 2003 Maastricht controllers will get a much-improved human-machine interface, consisting of a window on the main display screen rather than a separate screen, and this, as well as the increasing frequency of datalink transactions, will make them faster at operating it, they believe. An additional advantage to datalinking, controllers say, is that it provides a better means of sharing the workload between the executive and the non-executive controller at a workstation.
The International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers' Associations, however, warns that the Maastricht controllers' datalink experience is low, and advises caution as intensity of use increases. Workstation best operating practices have yet to be tested, it says.
Source: Flight International
