DrSyn
You'll now find that a fair proportion of Oceanic clearances and position reports on the NAT are actually made by datalink, be it SATCOM, VHF Datalink, or whatever. This includes all the major carriers. Somewhere around 40% of all requests or reports are now made this way I believe, and the figure is growing monthly.
The root cause is no longer politics since the ground systems
are available (and have been on various development trials with a select group of airline operators for about 3 years). The ball is now firmly in the court of the airlines to equip, train, and join in the progress if they want to
Have a word with your beancounters and tell them to get in touch about joining in !!
------------------
10 West
UK ATC'er
[email protected]