GATCO - Controller's View on the (European) ATM System of the Future

[missy]

Controller's View on the (European) ATM System of the Future by Dr Luis Barbero
https://airtrafficmanagement.keypubl...ture-GATCO.pdf

[ATC Watcher]

Funny to see little response to this excellent article showing where the profession is going. Everyone here in this ATC forum seem to be willing to become a controller but not interested to hear how the profession will evolve?

[SThor]

An interesting article and well written. Now, I don’t work continental European airspace but...

In particular, whether we are talking about upper or lower airspace, the biggest elephant in the room in this discussion is of political nature. European airspace is suboptimal because it is based on national needs and preferences, under the “umbrella claim” of national sovereignty.

Yep, who would have guessed it

Figure 2 shows another of the main problems of European airspace, the suboptimal allocation of special use (military) airspace, guess what - due to national boundaries [6]. In particular, when comparing the USA and the European case, we can see how the airspace with the highest density of traffic in the USA is free from restricted airspace, something that does not happen in the European case. The message is clear, the cooperation between civil and military aviation authorities in Europe needs to become much more effective. Dynamic flexible use of airspace needs to become a reality, so restricted airspace can be released on a tactical basis to cope with varying traffic conditions and capacity demands. Only then can we get that little bit closer to the promise of Free Route Airspace (FRA).

With large areas of restricted, and I’m guessing often at times empty, airspace what else is there to do but push traffic through the same old bottlenecks of already congested airspace? FRA is a distant dream without significant change in this particular area.

In recent years, we have seen a move by most Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) in Europe from being a provider of air navigation services to becoming ATM solutions companies, where ATC is just one sector of the business (although normally the highest earner). It is understandable for ANSPs to look at other revenue streams, particularly if it is in the non-regulated part of the business. However, how can we get European ANSPs, which are competing around the world for projects/contracts, to truly work together on improving the European ATM system leaving aside business interests?

‘Everybody’ is developing their own system(s) with export and profit in mind. Yes, if you could get some/many/all of these ANSP’s do develop a system that they all would use working similar high level airspace then that would simplify things exponentially. Doesn’t it all come down to money? Who pays and who profits?

Most ANSPs in Europe are product-based monolithic systems, owning all the assets required to provide air navigation services [5]. That model is not sustainable if we are to improve the capacity, flexibility and resilience of our ATM system. We need to gradually move to a service-based system where the provision of ATM data (flight information, surveillance, weather, aeronautical information) and the provision of an Air Traffic Service (ATS) are not necessarily linked [5].

ATC as a small, high earning part of a company is perhaps not a good solution as ATS risks to become secondary since it will earn revenues nearly regardless of services provided and money invested by the ANSP who then focuses elsewhere.