ATC and ATM
 

hey we are law students participating in an international law moot court competition. We happen to have a case identical to that of the ueberlingen collision (same facts just made up countries and services) and we are so lost in all the terminology about ATC and TCAS and STCA etc etc. If someone could help us out with a few clarifications it would be greatly appreciated. One more thing, what is the difference between ATM and ATC? I mean, does ATC fall into the sphere of ATM? Cause we are reading the ESARRs and they keep talking about ATM while in our case the company that is like skyguide was providing ATC services? Thank you so much all in advance and anyone who could possibly help and is willing to, are welcome to send us a private message :)

I'm assuming ATM means "Air Traffic Managment"

Which generally at least in this part of the world is called "ATS" or Air Traffic Services.

I think ATM/ATS are broad terms covering an entire network of systems. Centres/Towers/Flight Service etc.

While Air Traffic Control makes up a big portion of ATS/ATM, there are still many jobs/services that are provided to the aviation industry within the ATS umbrella which are not specifically Air Traffic Control.

Flight Planning/weather briefing just to name a couple of many.

So do you know if the ESARRs apply also to ATC where they mention ATM? Sorry but i am completely unaware of how these things work, i only know the very basic ive picked up through studying for the case...:confused:

Ok, a quick summary of the European regulatory environment.

The scope of EASARRs is Air Traffic Management (ATM). ATM is a combination of services/functions/facilities defined as 'The aggregation of ground based (comprising variously ATS, ASM, ATFM) and airborne functions required to ensure the safe and efficient movement of aircraft during all
appropriate phases of operations'.

Let's deal with each of these component parts of ATM. ATS is Air Traffic Services - Air Traffic Control (ATC) is one of these services, the others being Flight Information Service (FIS) and Alerting Service (usually abbreviated to ALR). These services are principally orientated around the instructions and advice passed to/from pilots by radio from the ground.

ASM is Airspace Management is a relatively new concept that revolves around making the finite resource of airspace available is the most efficient manner.

ATFM is Air Traffic Flow Management. This function regulates the flow of traffic at regional level with the objective of preventing overloading of the services/people in any particular area and optimising the capacity of the system. This function is now becoming known as Air Traffic Flow and Capacity Management (ATCFM) in recognition of the more recent use of this function to optimise system capacity.

There are another set of regulations that apply across the European region - the Single European Sky (SES) regulations. If your case study doesn't involve SES then it's best to ignore them. On the other hand, if SES is in your study there are additional things that you'll need to know....

As for the ESARRs, if you haven't already found it, there's information about them on the Eurocontrol website here.

That was really helpfull, thank you so much! I was so lost because i didnt know if i could use the ESARRs since they mention ATM and not ATC. Thank you so much once again!

Oh and something last, are these put down in some document etc? Because i will most likely need to link them to sme official document, if you have anything on the top of your head? :)