Patrik Peters
PRESIDENT & CEO
IFATCA
INT'L FEDERATION OF AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS ASSOCIATIONS
32
NextGen Now | Winter 2014
SESAR – and all is well?
SESAR, the Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research programme
is now underway since 2004 as the European air traffic control infrastructure
modernization program. What has it done for us and subjecting us to?
Following the definition and the development phase we now find ourselves in the
deployment phase – it is therefore time to look at what SESAR has brought us in
terms of benefits and what challenges are put upon us.
Benefits that can be qualified as success or rather as best practices in Europe
include the introduction of 'free flight' based upon the free route concept in
the service provision areas, for example, NAV Portugal, the IAA Ireland, and
Eurocontrol's Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre. In these airspaces flight
planning from entry to exit point has been made possible based on the availability
of military airspace. This allows for user-friendly flight planning, offloading of
known airways, and redistribution of air traffic – though sometimes leading to
increased complexity. As known crossing points and conflict areas shift to a more
dynamic traffic pattern, more advanced tools to assist air traffic controllers in their
daily work become a necessity.
The introduction of trajectory-based conflict detection on the horizontal, as well
as on the vertical axes, allows controllers at Skyguide Geneva (Switzerland),
Hungarocontrol (Hungary), and Eurocontrol Maastricht to perform these tasks pro-
actively and user friendly.
Modes S downlink of aircraft parameters (DAP) as a MONitoring Assistance
(MONA) tool for controllers can be regarded as the biggest leap forward since
the introduction of Short Term Conflict Alert (STCA). Here, the selected altitude
from the aircrafts' Flight Management System (FMS) is compared with the altitude
input at the controller working position and an alert is triggered upon detection
of a discrepancy enabling for immediate voice intervention and corrective action.
These features are being implemented at several air traffic control facilities
throughout Europe. More information on this tool as in use at the Eurocontrol
Maastricht UAC can be found here.
A video explaining the functionality is available here.
Additionally, several other MONA applications have been introduced, mainly
facilitating route updates by automatically monitoring flight tracking and
