A senior official at Thales, the world's leading supplier of air traffic management (ATM) equipment, has questioned Boeing's motives for entering the ATM market. Speaking at a press conference Michel Mathieu, Thales senior vice-president air traffic management, said: "The ATM market is full of competition. I can't see why Boeing would want to get involved."
Talking about Boeing's Air Traffic Management for the US National Airspace System, Mathieu comments that while Boeing is perhaps looking ahead to the next 25 years, what the company is proposing is not new.
Improvement
"I don't see the Boeing system providing the answer to congestion," he says. "Controllers and pilots need better informational tools, but this doesn¹t take human factors into account. If you don¹t address these you won't see any improvement."
Mathieu suggests that improving air traffic management in one part of the world won¹t sort out the global problems.
A global future system could not take into account all the multitude of regional systems and requirements. "ATM systems are not using the same data, which is essential," he observes. "I don¹t see how the Boeing plan answers this."
Source: Flight Daily News
