Improving African ATC?
 

All of us who regularly fly in African airspace long for an improvement in the service. In today's news Clare Short is criticising Tanzania for wanting to invest £28m in it's ATC system.

I wonder why airlines can't pay the nav charges direct to equipment suppliers like BAE Systems to fund the improvement rather than the subject become a political wrangle because the equipment costs too much for these poor countries. The article fails to mention revenues from nav charges. ICAO, where are you on this?

<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/newsid_1726000/1726756.stm" target="_blank">BBC News article</a>

Rod

The objection seems to be that a "civil" ATC system would cost about £7M, whereas the specifed "military" system is priced at about £28M.

Any experts out there who can explain the difference from the civil revenue-earning traffic point of view? The specifics have never been addressed in depth by the media or the politicians as far as I've seen/heard.

The main difference between the civil and military systems would be the use of primary radar - expensive to install - and secondary radar. Whilst Civil ATC can see all transponding aircraft, military need primary to identify non-transponders. The price appears to be way OTT for a civil or mil system. Question - with eight aircraft in their air force, do they really need this expensive toy? I have seen this sort of thing happen in other countries where they are conned into buying an unnecessarily complicated system and then spend ten years paying for it.

Another typical stupidity fed by Export banks offering huge loans to inflated contracts, with everybody apparently winning : the manufacturers who get rid of expensive equipment (with often no maintenance contracts and no spares )the local civils cervants who can show off and become important, the local politicians at the receiving end that receive money "commissions" and the politicians at the manufacturing end boosting "jobs created ".

We've see that in so many countries . They buy BMWs with all options where a Toyota would be perfect and more suited to the terrain.
For civil ATC today,in Africa, a couple of single monopulse SSR radars , a small air conditionned room with 5 or 6 sectors, and well trained and well paid staff ( controllers and technicians to maintain the stuff )will be sufficient. All off the shelf with proven 10-years old technology and the least gadgets possible. The costs will be closer to 5 Millions USD that to 30....But with this you do not impress people....but it will work for 20 years..

Suggest you look at BAe Systems past history on 'kick backs' etc. - in fact this whole Tanzania issue appears to revolve around such inferences...that is why operators will never pay nav charges direct to them or people like them!

I would suggest an ICAO sponsored collection system which could/would then pay to local nav service agencies and/or sub contract to specialist ATC providers where the local provision is inadequate or infrastructure is incomplete...supplying a full turnkey personnel/equipment package or augmenting local capabilities as required such as SERCO, Johnson Control (if they still exist?), UK NATS et al for example...

[ 30 December 2001: Message edited by: Boss Raptor ]</p>

Don't forget that in Africa, the less service (and fewer nav facilities) that are provided, the higher the overflight charges are.

Good examples there are Sudan (with the highest overflight charges in the world); Angola and the DRC.

On the positive side, it's good to see that Nigeria has significantly improved its ATNS operations, though.