Weekly review #07 – 12th of July 2019

The week in ATM has been marked by two operational incidents. Gatwick closed for 1h30 because of an ATM system failure in the ATC tower. Gatwick Airport and Air Navigation Solutions did not communicate about the causes so far.

The other mishap was in Amsterdam where two aircraft collided during pushback. This triggered an interesting discussion on linkedin about operational factors and possible technical help to prevent such incidents in the future. Thanks to all commenters for your inputs. It is not too late to join the discussion.

Capacity trends in Europe

Traffic keeps growing in Europe, This has been confirmed by the ACI Europe traffic report for May 2019. with 3.1% more compared to the same period last year. European ANSPs work hard on increasing capacity to avoid congestion like last summer. As often in ATC, these plans are on the long term. Mircea Bostina, CEO of ROMATSA gave an interview to CANSO drawing the pillars of efficient ATM in Europe: airspace design, technology and industry partnerships.

DFS also works on increasing capacity, especially by removing staff related bottlenecks. There are not less than 112 ATCO candidates ready to start their training.

Techology and innovation

• Fraport to use predictive landing time technology from FlightAware
• New weather radar in operation at Amsterdam Schiphol
• Swissport and SITA to collaborate on data sharing
• Dubai Airports launches realtimeDXB, a could platform to manage airport operations

Other news

• IFATCA reacted to the conviction of an ATCO in Switzerland
• Altitude Angel sent an open letter to the BBC to react to the partiality of the ‘Britain’s Next Air Disaster? Drones’ programme
• More consolidation in the drones industry: Altitude Angel and Pierce Aerospace to form an alliance
• NATS holdings results for the year ending by March 2019