Weekly review #08 – 19th of July 2019

Before the usual weekly review of the ATM, UTM and airports industry, here is a link to a deeper analysis of the decision by Fraport to use data and algorithms from FlightAware to improve the landing times estimation. This is has the potential of impacting the way ATC, airports and the Network Manager work in the future.

On a side note, expect more of such analysis on this website in the future. Being vendor and operator neutral, we can provide objective expertise, don't hesitate to get in touch if you need similar reports or analysis for your own purposes.

Market news

• Rohde & Schwarz new HF communication system for the Philipines completes factory acceptance test
• Northrop Grumman / Park Air Systems and Leonardo / Vitrocisset to update Italy's ENAV's VHF ground-air VHF communication systems
• DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung buy new direction finders from Rohde & Schwarz
• Muscat Airport to deploy a drone detection system from Aaronia
• Spain's ENAIRE new Mode-S radar starts operation (in Spanish)
• DSNA and MetSafe integrate weather data in a SWIM service

Company news

• Croatia Control annual report 2018
• Vinci Airports traffic report for Q2-2019
• New COO at ADBSafegate
• IATAS and GroupEAD to collaborate in the area of Air Traffic Management and Aeronautical Data Management

The drones corner

The big news this week in the drones are is that google (via Wing, a subsidiary of Alphabet) is now tackling the UTM market! A free app has been released in Australia.

• Altitude Angel launches a UTM service which includes deconfliction
• Still about Altitude Angel, the BBC responded to their open letter (see last week review) and the response seems quite disappointing
• Involi and AirMap will collaborate to better integrate surveillance data and UTM platform

Food for thought

Besides news, a few interesting ideas, concept and research results caught our attention this week. The first one is co-authored by Marina Efthymiou and Karel Lootens and got presented at the IATA Aviation Data Symposium in Athens. Their research addresses the relatively slow adoption rate of SWIM and suggests ways to better communicate the advantages of SWIM to all stakeholders. The article can be downloaded here and here is the slide deck presented at the symposium.

• Why not use already existing aircraft and convert them to UAVs instead of developping totally new vehicles? This could make the certification process easier and shorten it.
• The current edition of European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC) magazine has an article asking what artificial intelligence can bring to air traffic management.
• International Airport Magazine has a far looking article trying to answer interesting questions: what would an airport designed and opearted by a big tech company (let's say google or apple) look like and where will the next big player in the airport industry come from?
• The SESAR Depoyment Manager lauched a new website focused on the implementation of ADS-B in Europe. The numbers are quite interesting and a bit surprising... surprisingly low, to be honest.