Weekly Review #193 - ICAO Council achieve a major milestone

First up, there's exciting news from SESAR partners who have successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of a system using plate lines. These parallel plates are arranged one after another to reduce wake vortices at large airports. Experts gathered at Vienna Airport to present the results of testing these plate lines, revealing that wake vortex lifetime in ground proximity can be reduced by up to 37%.

Next, we have news about a major milestone achieved by the ICAO Council. Their adoption of new dual-frequency multi-constellation standards is an important development towards improving the safety, efficiency and sustainability of international air transport. In the future, these new standards will provide international aviation with access to an extensive global infrastructure and over 50 new GNSS satellites.

In other news, EASA is looking forward with its ‘Proposal for a Roadmap on Higher Airspace Operations (HAO)’. This roadmap explores the challenges of future operations in the airspace above FL550 and summarises the work undertaken by EASA's task force team in the last two years to ensure a uniform approach to safety, security and sustainability of air transport in the EU. It also recommends a number of actions to allow the first higher airspace operations while designing the future regulatory framework.

And finally, we have a special episode of our podcast, Radar Contact. In it, we answer the question we've asked a lot of our guests over the last few years: how does FoxATM see the evolution of ATM in 5 and 50 years?

ANSP news

• QCAA: Qatar Began Fully Managing Doha Flight Information Region - The Qatar Civil Aviation Authority announced that the State of Qatar began fully managing the Doha Flight Information Region, in implementation of the decision of the International Civil Aviation Organization in its first phase.

Context information

• Working with the UN, ICAO and NATO to counter aviation terrorism -EUROCONTROL - NEASCOG, the NATO-EUROCONTROL Air Traffic Management Security Coordinating Group, has jointly hosted a workshop with the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism in the framework of the Programme on Threat Assessment Models for Aviation Security.
• ERA has shown the path to singlelateration at the NSUR meeting - ERA participated in the seventh meeting of Network Surveillance User Group held in Brussels. After almost three Covid years of impersonal online meetings, Surveillance manufacturers were asked to summarize their progress and how they see the future of surveillance considering Air Traffic Management.
• The Need for Pushback Simulators - L3Harris - Aircraft tractors or tugs help planes back up and away from gates. Learn how pushback training simulators can assist in training tug operators more effectively.
• Inspiring future generations of controllers - NATS Blog - To celebrate Women’s History month, we caught up with some of our air traffic controllers at Prestwick Centre to find out why encouraging more women into aviation is important to them.
• EUROCONTROL PRC report on 2022 European ANS performance ready for consultation - The EUROCONTROL Performance Review Commission has just prepared an independent review of how European air navigation services performed in 2022, which is now open for stakeholder consultation.

Reports and data

• NAV CANADA reports February traffic figures​ - In February 2023 weighted charging units were higher on average by 28.8 percent compared to the same month in 2022. As compared to the same month in fiscal 2019, February 2023 weighted charging units were lower on average by 8.9 percent.
• KIX, ITAMI, KOBE February 2023 Traffic Report - The total passenger traffic for the 3 airports reached 70% recovery from February 2019.

Research and innovation

• SESAR 3 programme: new funding for 12 Leonardo research projects - As part of the new SESAR 3 research and innovation programme for the digitalisation of European skies, Leonardo was awarded 10 projects out of the 48 selected, for a total investment of EUR 350 million by the aeronautics industry and the European Union, through the Horizon Europe funding programme
• Serving safety and capacity on a plate - SESAR JU - SESAR partners have successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of a system using plate lines – parallel plates arranged one after another - to reduce wake vortices at large airports. Experts from Europe and beyond gathered in February for thee SESAR2020 VLD3 Wave-2 SORT visitor day for presented the results of testing plate lines, a system offering important safety and capacity benefits for large airports.
• Roadmap on Higher Airspace Operations (HAO) proposed by EASA - EASA has published a ‘Proposal for a Roadmap on Higher Airspace Operations (HAO)’ exploring the challenges of future operations in the airspace above FL550.
• GNSS milestone achieved as ICAO Council adopts new dual-frequency multi-constellation standards - The ICAO Council achieved a major milestone this week in the global standardization and roll-out of new dual-frequency multi-constellation capabilities for international aviation’s Global Navigation Satellite System.
• Austria at the forefront of synergy building in SESAR - In 2022, Austrian stakeholders across the aviation value chain joined forces to establish a networking initiative, the aim of which is to facilitate stronger synergies between European and national programmes addressing air traffic management modernisation. In this article, we hear from three leading representative in this innovative Austrian initiative.

UAV and UTM

• Murzillo partners with Skypuzzler to support stakeholders with U-space implemention - Unmanned airspace - Murzillo Consulting has partnered with Skypuzzler AAM with the aim of providing U-space stakeholders with the knowledge they need for end-to-end implementation of their strategic U-space goals.
• ADW 2023: Israeli government "to fund setting up of an urban U-space area" - Unmanned airspace - The Israeli government will fund the setting-up a U-space municipal eco-system as part of the next stage in the Israel National Drone Initiative, according to Benny Davidor, from the Israeli Civil Aviation Authority, speaking at Amsterdam Drone Week.