Julian Moxon/PARIS
The Hungarian air traffic and airport administration LRI has been forced to delay the service entry of its new air traffic control (ATC) centre by seven months because of the conflict in Yugoslavia. Other central European administrations introducing new ATC equipment are likely to follow suit.
Hungary's Matias centre, featuring the Siemens-Plessey Eurocat system, was to begin operations at the end of April, but service entry has been put back to November to avoid capacity restrictions as the new system is introduced (Flight International, 13-19 August, 1997).
A source at Eurocontrol says: "It was a very difficult decision to take, but was necessary to preserve the maximum ATC capacity during the crisis in Yugoslavia."
The Czech Republic has also decided to delay service entry of its new ATC system, also the Eurocat, to co-ordinate service entry with that of Hungary. "Taking into account the recent closure of a huge amount of airspace around Yugoslavia, we have decided to review our schedule," says the Czech Republic. "We made this decision based on careful consideration of system safety." Co-ordinating operational start dates will also "minimise the inevitable operational consequences for the airlines".
Hungary, which borders Yugoslavia, has had to bear the brunt of problems caused by the Kosovo crisis as about one-third of its airspace has been given over to NATO traffic. It has a highly developed civil/military coordination programme, but Eurocontrol says the early introduction of the new Matias system, developed with its advice, "would result in a 30% increase in delays while we introduce the new equipment".
This is due to the inherent problems of introducing a new ATC system when a large number of flight plan corrections are being made as a result of the airspace modifications over the Yugoslavia region.
Source: Flight International
