Emma Kelly/LONDON
In May last year, more than 800 International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) states and aviation decision makers met in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to discuss communications, navigation and surveillance/air traffic management (CNS/ATM) implementation.
More than a year later progress towards global CNS/ATM implementation may appear slow, but pockets of activity worldwide suggest that substantial moves are being made towards meeting ICAO's CNS/ATM recommendations.
ICAO's 1998 Worldwide CNS/ATM Systems Implementation Conference focused aviation decision makers' attention on CNS/ATM as never before, and it has remained on the agenda. At next month's Caribbean/South American Regional Air Navigation meeting, for example, CNS/ ATM will be officially taken into account for the first time in the formulation of a new navigation plan for the region, says ICAO.
Global CNS/ATM implementation is vital for the future development of the industry. CNS/ATM is set to bring major benefits, in the form of cost savings for airlines and ultimately airline passengers, capacity improvements, safety improvements and environmental benefits. Annual cost savings in the region of $6 billion are expected.
The biggest hurdle involves finance. The Rio declaration states that sound financial management is critical to securing financing for CNS/ATM projects. It recommends that new ways of financing should be studied and that financing should reflect the multi-national dimension of most CNS/ATM system components.
ICAO is offering help to states in preparing and negotiating loans to fund CNS/ATM components and air navigation services infrastructure. The organisation is also pushing for regional co-operation among service providers in order to achieve efficient implementation and economic viability.
Regional co-operation is going on and in areas which can most benefit from a pooling of resources. Last month, 21 African countries agreed to jointly invest in a CNS/ATM system to manage their upper airspace. The nations of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) - Angola, Burundi, Comoros, Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe - are expected to endorse a memorandum of commitment for the joint project next month.
Seamless system
The African project is exactly what ICAO has been advocating to speed up CNS/ATM implementation. The system, which is due to be operational in late 2002, is intended to provide COMESA countries with a seamless upper airspace management system - 24,000ft (7,320m) above sea level - through the use of satellite communications, automatic dependent surveillance and very small aperture terminal links to reduce dependence on ground aids.
The decision to go ahead follows a technical study earlier this year. COMESA commissioned the Safe African Skies Group (SASG) - a consortium of US private sector companies including Lockheed Martin, South Africa's Africon, Edlow Resources and financial advisor KPMG - to determine the feasibility of the joint project.
The study is the most comprehensive on CNS/ATM systems and the first of its kind in Africa, says COMESA. It intends to establish an ATM company owned by member states and international investors to manage the project, with SASG to lead the venture.
The technical study recommends an automated ATM system in the upper airspace that will integrate with approach and terminal traffic at member countries' airports. Control will be provided by two air traffic control centres in the region to which member countries will be linked through workstations in their own states. Each member country will be responsible for ATM in lower airspace in their countries. The cost of the system will be recovered from airspace user charges, as recommended by ICAO.
ICAO has welcomed the COMESA plan, particularly as developing states' difficulties in raising finance for CNS/ATM projects attracted major attention at the Rio meeting. Individual states need not work alone to resolve their financing problems, ICAO believes. The organisation advocates the development of regional or global co-operative ventures to provide system components.
At the Rio conference, it was mostly developing African states that argued that their low traffic density and other more pressing demands for finance within their states would not attract financing through the ICAO-advised means. Deficiencies in the air traffic systems of many developing nations means CNS/ATM implementation in these areas is seen as vital.
Because of financing difficulties faced by developing nations, following the Rio summit, ICAO agreed to expedite studies of an international aviation monetary fund.
"Substantive work" has been conducted on the international aviation monetary fund and a paper is to be presented to the ICAO council this autumn, says the organisation, although it declines to reveal details. The fund would primarily finance safety-related projects and those connected with the global implementation of CNS/ATM system components, projects related to the ICAOsafety oversight programme and improvements to air navigation services infrastructure.
In addition to supporting ICAO's CNS/ ATM recommendations when it comes to financing systems, COMESA's joint approach to CNS/ATM also backs ICAO's recommendations on co-operation among states. ICAO's Rio declaration recommends that the planning and implementation of CNS/ATM systems should be on the basis of homogeneous ATM areas or major international traffic flows.
Probably the most advanced example of such co-operation is happening in the South Pacific, where, since early 1998, states in the region have been working on plans which will eventually see the co-operative management of their airspace.
In 1998 the aviation ministers of the states of the South Pacific Forum - Australia, the Cook Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu - agreed to manage South Pacific airspace co operatively as a unified airspace.
The plan will see five flight information regions (FIR) - Fiji, New Zealand, Nauru, the Solomon Islands and the USA - reduced to just one. The South Pacific Forum's aim is to optimise aviation safety, reduce the cost of aviation services in the Pacific region and to facilitate economic growth, particularly through tourism. The move would create one of the largest and most cost-effective single ATM regions in the world, according to the South Pacific Forum, with airlines expected to save millions of dollars every year.
Complex issues
Complex legal and institutional issues are being worked out as the plan calls for the delegation of service provision for sovereign and oceanic airspace to an outside service provider.
Further moves are also being made towards autonomous air traffic service providers as autonomy is accompanied by financial freedom, according to ICAO. Autonomous authorities have better access to the money markets to finance CNS/ATM projects. Autonomy brings with it corporate or commercial-type management, improved operational efficiency, managerial control and improved control over revenue flows.
At the Rio conference, Nav Canada was highlighted as a good example of an air navigation service provider that has made the transition from a government organisation to the private sector. Similar moves are occurring elsewhere.
Germany's air traffic services provider Deutsche Flugsicherung (DFS) remains state owned, but it is corporatised and keen to move more towards the private sector.
Meanwhile, the UK Government has kick-started the partial privatisation of its National Air Traffic Services (NATS). This summer, the government confirmed plans to sell 51% of NATS stock over the next two years. The successful bidder will have 46% of a public/private NATS partnership with the government, which will hold 49% plus a "golden share", with employees offered the remaining 5%. The UK expects the move to help NATS secure £1 billion ($1.6 billion) in investment over the next 10 years, as well as introducing commercial management expertise.
A major area standing in the way of CNS/ATM implementation is states' concern with the ownership and availability of satellite systems. Although the USA and Russia have made their global positioning system (GPS) and Glonass system available to the international aviation community, there are no legally binding agreements assuring continued availability of the satellite signals to civil users. This concern was a major factor in Europe's decision earlier this year to develop its Galileo satellite navigation system independent of GPS.
Progress in establishing a legal framework for global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) remains slow as the task is complex. A draft charter has been agreed on the rights and obligations of states relating to GNSS services as an interim framework for CNS/ATM systems. Work continues on the establishment of a legal framework for GNSS on a long-term basis. This work will not delay global CNS/ATM implementation, stresses ICAO.
Source: Flight International
