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Weekly review #162 - 17th August

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Posted August 17 2022 by Vincent Lambercy

First up this week, how have the NATS engineering teams adapted to the new digital tower at London City Airport? It’s been over a year since they successfully transitioned to a digital tower and began controlling flights from a brand-new operations room based in our Swanwick control centre. Over on the NATS blog, they spoke to Deputy Service Manager Graham Lewis to find out.

 

In Airport news, Egis joint venture SEGAP and Zanzibar Airport Authority are celebrating the successful conclusion of a full-scale, real-life, multi-agency Emergency Exercise at Zanzibar Airport. The July exercise simulated the crash of a commercial airliner, just before landing on the runway. It involved 450 people with the coordination of multiple stakeholders.

 

In other news, Frankfurt Airport (FRA) welcomed more than 5 million passengers in a single month for the first time since the start of the pandemic – representing an increase of 76.5 percent compared to July 2021. The upward trend was driven by the ongoing rise in demand for holiday flights. Germany’s largest aviation hub thus maintained its rapid growth momentum – despite a one-day strike by Lufthansa ground staff in late July resulting in some 100,000 passengers less for the reporting month.

 

Finally, NASA has been evaluating how urban air mobility operations could achieve a high degree of automation. To pave the way for high degrees of automated operations by new aircraft including eVTOL vehicles, NASA researchers have developed a prototype urban air mobility ecosystem using its Langley and Ames facilities. Using simulation and live flight trials, they have been evaluating how this would work in practice.

 

ANSP news

Airports news

  • Emergency Exercise completed at Abeid Amani Karume International Airport - Egis joint venture SEGAP and Zanzibar Airport Authority are celebrating the successful conclusion of a full-scale, real-life, multi-agency Emergency Exercise at Zanzibar Airport. The exercise involved 450 people with the coordination of multiple stakeholders.
  • Ambitious: Brisbane Airport Brings Forward Net-Zero Target To 2025 - Brisbane Airport is bringing forward its net-zero target by 25 years. The busy Queensland airport had targeted a 2050 net-zero target date in line with many other aviation industry organizations. But on Friday, the airport said it would dramatically accelerate its emission reduction targets and commit to net-zero by 2025.
  • VINCI Airports Becomes A Leading Shareholder In 13 Mexican Airports - British Aviation Group - VINCI Airports is now the top shareholder at Viva Aerobus' base of operations. Earlier this week, VINCI Airports, a branch of VINCI Concessions, announced it has signed an agreement to purchase a 29.99% of OMA, an airport group administrating 13 airports in Mexico, including Monterrey International Airport, one of the country’s top hubs, and Viva Aerobus’ base of operations. With this transaction, VINCI Airports has become the leading shareholder at OMA.
  • Statistics of Lithuanian Airports in July: aviation flows have almost reached pre-pandemic results - In July this year, Lithuanian Airports almost reached the pre-pandemic total monthly passenger flow results – last month we managed to restore 97% of the same passenger flow in 2019. In July, more than 577,000 passengers travelled through the country’s airports and 4,795 flights were handled. For the fourth month in a row, Kaunas Airport’s performance exceeded even the record-breaking results of 2019.
  • London Stansted reached 90% of pre-Covid traffic in July - London Stansted’s strong recovery from the pandemic continues with 2.5 million passengers travelling through the airport in July 2022, representing 90% of pre-Covid traffic.

Market news

  • Joan Amble Joins Board of Directors of Spire Global, Inc. - Spire is a global provider of space-based data, analytics, and space services today announced that it has appointed Joan Amble to the Company’s board of directors. In her role, Ms. Amble will work with Spire’s leadership team to implement best practices as the business continues to quickly scale.
  • Becker Avionics Appoints Stefan Gramolla as Chief Executive Officer - Effective since 1st of July 2022, Stefan Gramolla has been appointed as Chief Executive Officer of Becker Avionics replacing Wolfgang Kuehling, who has been acting as Interim-CEO for the last year. Stefan Gramolla has more than 20 years of experience in the aviation and communication industry.

Context information

  • Traffic management and resource allocation for UAV-based parcel delivery paper published - Unmanned airspace - A new paper entitled “Traffic management and resource allocation for UAV-based parcel delivery in low-altitude urban space” is now available online with open access in Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies. Authors Ang Li and Mark Hansen at University of California, Berkley, present their findings on commercial drone operations in low-level urban airspace. The paper proposes a framework of Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles system traffic management in the context of parcel delivery in low-altitude urban airspace, including clustering-based UAV path planning, Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management with Conflict Detection and Resolution, and mechanism design for airspace resource allocation.

Reports and data

  • Fraport Traffic Figures – July 2022: Passenger Growth Continues - Frankfurt Airport exceeds the five-million monthly passenger mark for the first time since the pandemic – Fraport’s worldwide Group airports sustain dynamic growth – Greek airports surpass pre-crisis levels by 11.1 percent
  • The Europe Gate To The Atlantic - 2021 SW FAB Annual Report - After a complicated year 2020 for air transport due to COVID-19, hopes were high for a strong recovery in 2021. However, 2021 has turned out to be another difficult year. Although air traffic greatly surpassed 2020 levels during the year, traffic figures are still well below those of 2019, which is considered to be the year of reference for normal activity before the coronavirus.
  • NAV CANADA reports July traffic figures - In July 2022 weighted charging units were higher on average by 75.2 percent compared to the same month in 2021. As compared to the same month in fiscal 2019, July 2022 weighted charging units were lower on average by 13.5 percent.

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