ifatca the controller - april 2014
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THE CONTROLLER
Journal of Air Traffi c ControlApril 2014
INTE
R-NA
TIONA
L FEDERATION OF AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS’ ASSNS.
Also in this Issue:
4 World ATM Congress 2014
4 Winter Olympics
4 FOCUS ON SPAIN & GHANA
THE CONTROLLER
52 years - 204 issues - nearly 7500 pagesavailable soon on a digital platform near you!
Contents
THE CONTROLLER
In this issue:Cover photo:DR
April 2014Volume 53 Issue 1 – ISSN 0010-8073
The editorial team has endeavored to include all owner information, or at least source information for the images used in this issue. If you believe that an image was used without permission, please contact the editor via http://www.the-controller.net
EXECUTIVE BOARD OF IFATCA
Alexis BrathwaitePresident and Chief Executive Offi cer
Patrik PetersDeputy President
Duncan AuldExecutive Vice-President Technical
Scott ShalliesExecutive Vice-President Professional
Darrell MeachumExecutive Vice-President Finance
Keziah OgutuExecutive Vice-President Africa and Middle East
John CarrExecutive Vice-PresidentAmericas (a.i.)
Mike O’NeillExecutive Vice-President Asia and Pacifi c
Željko OreškiExecutive Vice-President Europe
Philippe DomogalaConference Executive
Tatiana IavorskaiaOffi ce Manager and Secretary
REGIONAL EDITORSPhil Parker, Asia Pacifi cSerge Tchanda, Africa & Middle East
COPY EDITORSPaul Robinson, Jez Pigden, Brent Cash, David Guerin Alasdair Shaw, Martin Pellegrine & Helena Sjöström
LAYOUT & PRINTINGLITHO ART GmbH & Co. Druckvorlagen KGFriesenheimer Straße 6aD 68169 MannheimGERMANY
Tel: +49 (0)621 3 22 59 10Fax: +49 (0)621 3 22 59 14email: [email protected]
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this magazine are those of the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers’ Associa-tions (IFATCA) only when so indicated. Other views will be those of individual members or contributors concerned and will not necessarily be those of IFATCA, except where indicated. Whilst every effort is made to ensure that the information contained in this publication is correct, IFATCA makes no warranty, express or implied, as to the nature or accuracy of the information. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or used in any form or by any means, without the specific prior written permission of IFATCA, except where indicated (e.g. a creative commons licence).
VISIT THE IFATCA WEB SITES: www.ifatca.org and www.the-controller.net
PUBLISHERIFATCA, International Federation of Air Traffi c Controllers‘ Associations360 St Jacques · Suite 2002Montreal, Quebec · H2Y 1P5 · Canada
Phone: +1514 866 7040Fax: +1514 866 7612 · Email: offi [email protected]
EDITOR-IN-CHIEFPhilip MarienVan Dijcklaan 31B-3500 Hasselt, Belgiumemail: [email protected]
DEPUTY EDITORPhilippe Domogalaemail: [email protected]
CORPORATE AFFAIRSThomas Fraenzl, frequentise-mail: [email protected]
3 THE CONTROLLER
THE CONTROLLER
Journal of Air Traffi c ControlApril 2014
INTER-
NATIO
NAL F
EDERATIO
N OF AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS’ ASSNS.
Also in this Issue:
4 World ATM Congress 2014
4 Winter Olympics
4 FOCUS ON SPAIN & GHANA
Foreword ...………………………………………………………...….. 4Editorial ...………………………………………………………........… . 5
Focus on Spain ...…………………………………………………..….... 6-14 Madrid Barajas Airport ..……………………………………....... 6
Madrid ACC ...………………………………………………......... 8 Canarias ACC ...………………………………………………….... 9
Flying VFR in the Canaries ...…………………………………... . 10 Training vs Effi ciency & Safety ………………………………..... 12
Focus on Ghana ...………………………………………………………........... . 15-20 Interview with Albert Taylor ...………………………………..... 15
Accra Tower and ACC ...………………………………...………. 16 Reaching out with Ultralights ...………………………………... 18 Flying VFR in Ghana ...………………………………...………… 20Africa IFR Flying across Africa ...………………………………...…….. 22Americas US Air Traffi c Control Staffi ng ...……………………………….. 23Europe Winter Olympics and ATC ...………………………………...….. 24Technology Put a Controller in your Team ...………………………………... 26Safety Opinion: EASA Responds ...………………………………...….. 28 Safety in ATC Conference ...………………………………...….. 30World Air Traffi c Management Conference ...………………………………...…. 32Book Reviews ...………………………………...…………………………………….. 34Charlie’s Column ...………………………………...………………………………... 35
THE CONTROLLER
52 years - 204 issues - nearly 7500 pagesavailable soon on a digital platform near you!
^ by Alexis Brathwaite, PCX and CEO IFATCA
Foreword
leadership in civil aviation issues. While we continue to strive for global solutions, in many instances the need to meet re-gional and national objectives through targeted interven-tions is a precursor to meeting global objectives. The AFI Plan was once such instance that demon-strated the foresight and leadership of ICAO. In 2008, the ICAO North Ameri-can, Central Ameri-can and Caribbean (NACC) Office estab-lished the Regional Aviation Safety Group – Pan America to be the focal point to ensure harmonization and coordination of safety efforts aimed at reducing aviation safety risks in the North American, Central American, Caribbean (NAM/CAR), and South American (SAM) Regions and to promote the implemen-tation of resulting safety initiatives by all stakeholders. RASG-PA fostered a never before seen collaboration between States, international organisations and industry. The success of this regional group prompt-ed the ICAO Assembly to establish safety groups for all ICAO regionals as the focal point for implementing the ICAO Global Aviation Safety Plan at regional levels.
The most significant step towards global implementation must be the Aviation Sys-tem Block Upgrade concept. While much work still needs to be done to explain this concept to many Stakeholders, in particu-lar States, there is no doubt that this is the most comprehensive attempt at collabo-ration lead by ICAO. States and Interna-tional Organisations provided experts to work with ICAO at the conceptual stage; leaders of international organisation were invited to identify challenges and propose solution to spur implementation; while States provided endorsement at the 12th
Air Navigation Conference. This has al-lowed the ICAO Assembly 38 to adopt revised Global Air Navigation and Global Aviation Safety Plans for the next 15 years.
These developments have now enabled States to adopt measurable and operation-al safety targets that they deem achievable. As an example, in April 2014, the NACC region will adopt the Port of Spain Decla-ration, which will establish regional safety and performance targets based on global objectives. States can be assured that assis-tance will be forthcoming from other States, industry partners and ICAO, evidence of a community working together.
As I step down as President and Chief Executive Officer of IFATCA, I feel truly privileged to have worked with many out-standing public servants who contribute so much to keeping us together as a global community though a safe and sustainable global aviation system. I close by acknowl-edging Dr. Assad Kotaite, ICAO President Emeritus who passed away earlier this year. He was a great friend and supporter of IFATCA and did more than anyone else to create the modern civil aviation system. ^
In 2007, IFATCA published our Statement on the Future of Global Air Traffic Man-agement, with the purpose to assist in an understanding of where current Air Traffic Management (ATM) is, to provide a tool for gathering support of a particular approach and to provide another step towards work-ing together to create the future global Air Traffic Management that is needed. At the time many in the global air traffic manage-ment community despaired that we could work together to create anything. In fact, many would not call us a community, but rather disparate stakeholders all seeking to have their own needs met.
While NEXTGEN and SESAR dominate the conversation, many individuals or organisa-tions still voice frustration at our inability to implement ATM solutions. However, my perspective from the past seven years as Deputy President and President and Chief Executive Officer of IFATCA, is that our ATM community has gone a long way to create the environment necessary to meet the global objectives for safety and per-formance in a seamless and interoperable ATM system. This may be seen by look-ing at what exists now that did not exist at the time of the publication of the IFATCA Future Statement, which posits that more than anything else, a comprehensive so-lution requires a high level of co-opera-tion between all members of the ATM Community. Since then, ICAO has invited IFATCA and other key ATM stakeholders to become closer collaborators by working together at the Air Navigation Commission. This allowed international organisations previously unprecedented opportunities to contribute to the debate and shape the so-lutions proposed for implementation. This ICAO leadership, both at the global level through the Air Navigation Bureau and at the regional level through the ICAO region-al officers, has been the driving force in the changes I have seen.
At Assembly 36, in 2007, ICAO adopted the AFI plan, The Comprehensive Regional Implementation Plan for Aviation Safety in Africa, through the recognition that the organisation needed to exert increased
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COLLABORATIONTHE KEY TO SUCCESS
IFATCA and the editorial team of The Con-troller are proud to announce the availability of the magazine in electronic format for both Apple and Android devices. Functionality on both is comparable: single issues can be ac-cessed for $0.99, while a one-year subscrip-tion will cost you $9.99. The latter allows you to access all issues available in our online archive: currently, some 60 issues can be ac-cessed - the oldest one from 1962! Thanks to Hans-Ulrich Heim, who donated his complete collection of IFATCA’s Journal, we'll soon (?) have the entire collection scanned in and available in electronic format!
http://goo.gl/ZPRCP2 http://goo.gl/J0sDgp
Editorial
While this event is forming aviation his-tory (for all the wrong reasons), this issue is probably a small piece of history as well: in all likelihood, it is the last issue that is printed centrally by IFATCA. Pending a discussion at the 2014 Annual Conference in Gran Canaria, Spain, we’re planning to concentrate on producing an electronic version of the magazine. At the same time, we’re planning to move away from a paid subscription model: if we want to promote IFATCA and its policies, we believe that access to The Controller should essen-tially be free. Given that our major cost in producing the magazine is printing & distribution, a logical step is to move away from the paper version. While this also has limitations, we believe the benefits will outweigh the disadvantages – not in the least that all Member Associations should be able to distribute the IFATCA Journal to their membership at no (or a fraction) of what a subscription costs them today. For those unable to attend the 2014 Con-ference, we’ll make sure to update our
website and Fa-cebook pages with details on how to make sure you receive your copy!
As for this issue, we have a focus on Ghana and Spain. Sadly, senior manag-ers from both countries withdrew inter-views we had with them at the last minute, meaning that the views and plans from the management perspective are somewhat absent from these focusses.
As always, we hope you enjoy these arti-cles and the other ones in this, probably historical issue. Who knows, it might be-come a collector’s item! ^
As I am writing this editorial, half the world is looking for a Boeing 777 that seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. Leaving aside any speculation as to what actually happened, it’s a stark reminder of how big our planet really is: we all know what vast distances an aircraft can cover in a relatively short period of time, but it’s incredibly hard to imagine the relative in-significance of one such aircraft in relation to the size of our planet. It also shows the limits of our surveillance and communi-cation equipment: I’m sure it’s got a few military people extremely worried that such an aircraft may have sneaked past them undetected… Time will hopefully tell what happened and why. But more importantly, it’s high time we bring communications and surveillance into the 21st century: the aver-age smartphone user can be tracked and contacted easier and far more reliably than our most modern aircraft. In some cases, passengers have even a better way of com-municating with someone on the ground than the pilots on the flight deck do!
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HISTORICAL?^ by Philip Marien, Editor
4 Everyone Reads The Controller!
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4 Focus on Spain
With an area of 505,992 km2, Spain – officially the Kingdom of Spain – is the second largest country in Western Europe and the European Union, and the fifth largest country in Europe. Spanish territory also includes the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean, the Canary Is-lands in the Atlantic Ocean off the African coast, and several other islands and enclaves. The country has some 46,500,000 inhabitants, with population quite unevenly spread across it: with the exception of the region surrounding the capital, Madrid, the highest populated areas lie around the coast.
Tourism accounts for nearly 11% of the country's GDP. In 2013, Spain was the third most visited country in the world, beaten only by the USA and France. Some 60.6 million tourists visited the country that year, most of which passed through one of the country’s 47 public airports.
The majority of these airports, including the largest ones in Madrid and Barcelona are owned and operated by AENA, a Spanish public body. AENA is also responsible for Air Traffic Control throughout Spain. The com-pany employs around 13,000 staff, of which nearly 2,000 are operational air traffic con-troller. A number of smaller airports and their respective Air Traffic Services have recently been privatised. ^
Credit: © Natursports | Dreamstime.com
In 2000, a Plan Barajas kicked off: a new ter-minal and satellite-terminal buildings, new parking facilities and 2 new runways. To-day, the runway layout (36R/18L, 36L/18R, 32R/14L, 32L/14R) increases the complexity and defines a new concept: "the missed ap-proach protection area". In north configura-tion (the main one), the 36L controller has to take care, not only of aircraft on the depar-ture routes, including speed and wake turbu-lence categories and the 36R departures, but of the arrivals to runway 32R. In the event of a missed approach, the path of the aircraft going-around will interfere with the depar-
MADRID BARAJAS AIRPORTCHALLENGES AND DEVELOPMENTS^ by Carmen Rodríguez Pozo, LEMD Tower Supervisor
Madrid Barajas airport, man-aged by AENA, with 129 AT-COs, is the busiest airport in Spain in number of passengers, cargo and operations. With al-most 40 million passengers in 2013, Barajas remains the fifth biggest in Europe, where it acts as one of the main hubs for South America. Despite the recession causing a drop in the number of passengers, it also retains 15th spot in the global statistics.
Located 15km from the centre of Madrid, it is a 24-hour airport. The ATC environment is highly complex: not only there are other airports nearby, the two arrival and two de-parture runways are also dependent. There are two SMR (Surface Movement Radars) and a multi-lateration system that automati-cally identifies all aircraft and transpond-er-equipped vehicles. Since 1927, when construction of the airport began, it has un-dergone multiple changes. These have even affected nearby airports: in Torrejon de Ar-doz for example, the runway was moved to enable opening new runways in Barajas.
Photo: © Luis2007 | Dreamstime.com
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SPAINAN INTRODUCTION
Madrid Barajas (LEMD) is one of the five European airports test-ing an advanced Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) tool. The idea is to integrate all possible information to decide when a flight will be ready to depart. This includes airline operations, fuel, airport gates, luggage han-dling, … and of course ATC. The aim is to minimize the waiting time with the engines running at the holding point: ideally, there should never be more than 2 or 3 aircraft waiting at the holding point and to have everyone take off as close as possible to their slot times.
Asking the controllers what they thought of it, we got mixed answers: “One of the problems at the moment is that the system is not fed with data from the CFMU. Another problem seems to be that it’s the airline reports when the aircraft is ready to start up rather than the pilots! When something chang-es, many airlines are not flexible enough to quickly update their flight plans.
The system also cannot cope with aircraft that are ready earlier than fore-seen, which can be problematic for business jets: recently one of them was ready to depart 30 minutes ahead of its flight plan, and although there was no traffic at all at the time he wanted to go, the system would not accept this. In the end we decided to let him go without an updated flight plan.
We realize the system is in a test phase for the moment, and that these issues will be solved eventually. But until that happens, it’s just extra work for the controllers.”
4 Focus on Spain
Credit: © Natursports | Dreamstime.com
ing the communications and coordination, and the runway occupancy time.
All these challenges mean that the only way Barajas can remain in the top airports of the world is by an efficient coordination and cooperation between controllers, airport management and airlines. ^
after the introduction of the Apron Service – the only Spanish airport to have this – there's only one ATC tower.
This was possible after a redefinition of the "apron" concept, which is now defined as an area of "access to stands", so a great part of the main taxiways are nowadays not con-trolled. This causes a lot of issues, because the transfer point between the two areas is close to a rapid exit of the runway, increas-
tures. In south configuration, the situation is similar, adding that departures from Torrejon Air Base require a stop to all departures from Barajas!
The terrain around Barajas, with mountains to the north of the field and the proximity of several cities, all of which have noise abate-ment procedures, means that the departures (and also the arrivals) have to be distributed according to geographical criteria. That im-plies that many aircraft have to taxi a long way from their stands to the holding point. In these circumstances, it’s essential that the controller adheres strictly to slot times and avoids unnecessary delays.
Lastly, there are also helicopters. Most of these are police or state flights and cross the runways in between with arriving and depart-ing aircrafts. These are considered "special flights" and they are allowed to enter the air-space keeping other traffic visual and ensur-ing they maintain their own separation.
The control tower is located close to the runways, annexed to the satellite terminal building. It was opened in 1998 replacing the South tower in terminal 2 as the main one. Until 2011, Madrid Barajas airport had 3 control towers: the North one, with local positions, clearance delivery, apron in the satellite terminal and part of the ground movement control; West tower, for apron and ground movement in the terminal 4, and South tower for the apron and ground move-ment in terminals 1, 2 and 3. At the moment,
4 The new tower at LEMD. Photo: MA
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4 View from inside the tower at Madrid Barajas. Photo: MA
Another particularity is the ID card: every controller has a card to enter the operations room. The same card needs to be inserted into a slot on the working position when he takes over. If this handover takes a lit-tle longer than planned, e.g. during a busy session or when there’s a lot going on, the system flags the controller being relieved as exceeding his/her maximum of two hours on position. This not only alerts the supervisor but triggers an automatic letter from man-agement a few days later, officially warning the controller that he/she was too long on a position. Again, this shows the limits of au-tomation when dealing with human beings...
Being the largest centre of its kind in Spain, it’s very busy and the workload is generally very high. Traffic flows in- and outbound to/from Madrid are not spread very evenly, with the peak moments causing major bot-tlenecks and delays. ^
4 Focus on Spain
MADRIDAREA CONTROL CENTRE
This large centre is located near the entrance of the mili-tary airbase of Torejon (LETO), just a few kilometre north of Madrid Barajas Airport. The operations room is divided into 3 parts – locally known as ‘cores’. There are two en-route cores, North and South; and a TMA core that controls the approach for the four ma-jor airports in the TMA: Bara-jas (LEMD), Torejon (LETO), Getafe (LEGT) and Cuatro Vientos (LECU). Madrid ACC is manned by around 450 air traffic controllers. They use a control system provided by the Spanish INDRA company. It’s a relatively standard system, which is still strip based. Inter-
action with the screen is through a keyboard and mouse interface.
Each core has between 8 and 9 sectors. Gen-erally, controllers are not cross-qualified to work more than one core. Each sector is nor-mally manned by two controllers, with the same qualifications.
The controllers work a 5 days-on / 3 days-off rotation. Their daily rosters are printed in advance and fixed for the day. They are en-titled to 25% break during daytime and 33% at night, with a maximum of never more than 2h on the position. The break schedule is cal-culated in a rather inflexible way: at the end of a shift, it makes sure that there was not more than maximum break time given with the last break will be calculated right down to the second. Breaks of 22 minutes and 30 seconds are possible!
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Photo: DP
Phot
o: O
scar
Mar
tinez
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Photo: Oscar Martinez Pereira
conventional system as the rest of the room while the other shows ADS-C/CPDLC data. Transferring data on an aircraft is currently only possible from the ADS-C/CPLDLC system to the radar system, which adds to the workload! An upgrade should soon remedy this.
This centre used to be less popular among Spanish AT-COs. As a result, most ‘fresh’ controllers, just out of school, had to come and work here as
The ACC has around 150 controllers, who controlled some 264.,000 flights last year. There’s around 100,000 movements at Las Palmas per year; 55,000 to Tenerife North and 44,000 to Tenerife South.The larger airports on the other islands (La Palma, Lanzarotte and Fuerteventura) are less busy but add to the complexity.
Radar covers the islands and the airspace to the north. The Oceanic sectors are covered by ADS-C and CPDLC - around 90% of aircraft are equipped and as a consequence, it works quite well. The Oceanic sector has to operate 2 different systems: one display uses the same
4 Focus on Spain
MADRIDAREA CONTROL CENTRE
The Las Palmas ACC is located just beside the main airport, close to the motorway. It’s hard to miss, since it has its own windmill!
The operations room is located in a new building. They use the same equipment as Madrid ACC, provided by Indra. There are currently nine sectors, four of which are area control and five are approach sectors. They provide en-route and oceanic control to all flights going and departing the vari-ous Canary Islands, and the ones overfly-ing the region. The FIR is ideally located: it’s underneath the main south transatlantic routes from Europe to South America. In ad-dition, they provide en-route services over what used to be the Spanish Sahara. They do this on behalf of the United Nations. This sector is quite special as Morocco controls the airports and the airspace around them: while there are direct telephone connections to the airports, it’s a politically very sensitive area and Casablanca ACC insists on relaying all coordinations.
In addition Las Palmas airport is also an im-portant military base. Given that the weather is generally good, the Spanish Air Force and NATO use the huge D79 area just south of the island for their exercises. Fortunately the area can be penetrated tactically and it works relatively well.
As if this isn’t enough complexity, the Canar-ies enjoy excellent conditions for astronomi-cal observations. As a result, there’s a large no-fly zone on the western side of the La Pal-ma island and a part of Tenerife in order not to disturb the observations. All this makes for a complex bit of airspace, with a lot of flights converging onto Las Palmas VOR
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LAS PALMAS (CANARIAS) CONTROL CENTRE^ by Philippe Domogala, Deputy Editor
Photos: DP
propeller and retractable gear. Patrik Pe-ters (IFATCA’s Deputy President) and Zeljko Oreski (our EVP Europe) accompanied me for a tour of the island. Formalities were easy: they just needed photocopies of my PPL licence and medical. And after a short briefing, we were ready for take-off.
Like pretty much everywhere else, flying in the Canaries is very dependent on the weather. Given they see a lot of sunshine throughout the year, the associated strong winds can. Both the major International air-port of Las Palmas (GCLP) and El Berriel have runways parallel to the coastline, despite the
4 Focus on Spain
FLYING VFR IN THE CANARIES
^ by Philippe Domogala, Deputy Editor
A few kilometres north of where the 2014 IFATCA con-ference will be held, is a small airfield called El Berriel (GCLB). It’s home to a number of flying
schools for helicopters, ultra-lights, gyrocop-ters, etc… It also houses an aero club with conventional GA aircraft. Using a lunch break during my last pre-conference visit, I rented a sturdy Piper PA-28 a 200 HP engine, pitch
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no one else volunteered. After a number of years, they could then apply for a transfer to a more popular centre… This meant the majority of controllers were relatively young and more readily accepted new concepts and systems. In combination with the varied traffic and the centre’s isolation, it’s evolved into AENA's test and development centre. Most new ideas are being tested in Canarias centre first! Currently, they are testing GNSS point-merge approaches and they expect to implement this during 2014, the first such im-plementation in Spain.
According to the controllers we spoke to, the main problem is a lack of staff: not all sectors can be opened during the peak traf-fic periods. Traffic is picking up again very quickly, after the sharp decrease in the last 3-4 years. An additional factor is the volatile situation in the Middle East, which results in many tourists rediscovering the Canaries for their winter break… The situation should somewhat improve before the summer sea-son, with an additional 12 new staff foreseen to strengthen the current complement. ^
CROSSWINDS, CLIFFS AND CLOUDS!
El Berriel is the old airport of Gran Canaria, used in the 1950s and 60s. The wreck of an old SPANTAX DC-7 is still parked there from that era. Now used only for VFR, some of its taxiways have been repurposed into a kart-racing track.More info on the aero club can be found on: www.aeroclubgrancanaria.com
Photos: DP
4 Obligatory selfi e in the cockpit.
The whole northern side of the island is covered with clouds. This is a common situation in Gran Canaria, so we had to head east, find a gap to de-scend back to 500ft. and find our airfield back. With the wind still full across, we made a straight in for Runway 07, sav-ing ourselves a few minutes.A smooth landing at 85 kts, us-ing full flaps and bit of ailerons. The 8 kts crosswind was not an issue for this heavy aircraft. It was another enjoyable flight and I promised myself to do this again during Conference, provided of course I can find the time and if the weather doesn’t act up. ^
700ft along the coastline, passing the Melon-eras hotel complex and avoiding a helicopter and a banner towing aircraft closer to the coast and 200 ft below. All traffic has to stay low to keep clear of GCLP Approach: its run-ways are only about 18 km away.
The coastline rapidly became quite rough and mountainous, with huge cliffs. The cen-tre, south- and west-side of the island are very mountainous. The highest peak is Pico Nieves at around 2000 m (6400ft). After clearing the APP sector, we could climb to 5500 ft. to enter the mountain range. While doing so, we could enjoy a view of Mt Teide, capped in snow, on the nearby island of Ten-erife. Teide is the highest mountain (or rather volcano) of Spain with 3700m (12.000 ft). We continued our flight into spectacular valleys, with views of some unique lava formations.
4 Focus on Spain
wind nearly always blowing inland from the sea. We only had an 8-10 kts crosswind, but during summer, 30-35 kts are not exception-al. VFR operations are often not possible un-der those conditions and even airline flights are sometimes cancelled due wind at GCLP.
Our aircraft today is heavy: with four peo-ple on board, full of fuel and at 23 degrees Celsius, it’s on the warm side. Acceleration on runway 25 is normal, but the end of the 800m runway is coming fast and I rotate a lit-tle early. Building up speed a few feet off the ground, the tolerance of the good old Piper shows. We climbed to 500ft to maintain until abeam the dunes, watching out for incoming traffic. There is not ATC or AFIS in El Berriel, just an auto-information frequency, in Span-ish of course… Visibility was unlimited under-neath a few clouds at 2000 ft. We maintained
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4 Rough and mountainous coastline.
Another Eurocontrol best practice recom-mends regular meetings between pilots and air traffic controllers to discuss operational procedures. Unfortunately, AENA does not schedule such exchanges on a regular basis, and although efforts have been made, there is no integration within the training schedule for air traffic controllers, thereby greatly re-ducing the impact.
Human factors trainingWithin the scope of the training on Human Factors, APROCTA considers that special at-tention should be paid to aspects regarding Team Resource Management (TRM), cogni-tive skills, Critical Incident Stress Manage-ment (CISM) and stress management, none of them being included on AENA’s training plans.
4 Focus on Spain
TRAINING VS. EFFICIENCY & SAFETY
^ by Fernando Marián de Diego, ATCO in Canarias ACC and Head of APROCTA Technical and Safety DepartmentTranslated by Iván Pérez González, ATCO in Barcelona ACC
General overviewAs a certified training provid-er, the Spanish ATS provider AENA is supposed to meet the legal requirements set by AESA (Spanish Air Safety Agency) and to comply with the legislation in force. These requirements are defined in a Spanish Royal Decree 1516/2009 and EC Regulation 805/2011. As the professional association of Spanish Con-trollers, APROCTA has identi-fied serious deficiencies in the training of AENA's air traffic controllers. Multiple safety rec-ommendations with regard to
air traffic controller training, issued by the two Spanish commissions for the investiga-tion of incidents and accidents dependent of the Spanish Ministry of Development, CI-AIAC and CEANITA, confirm our analysis.
Besides these deficiencies, there is a lack of clear and recurring training plans. In ab-sence of general guidelines from the training managers, it is left up to local managers, and their motivation, availability and knowledge, to schedule refresher training. They need to invest their time and resources in creating training material without basic guidelines or reference information.
As the professional association of the Span-ish Air traffic controllers, APROCTA pub-lished an “Analysis of Training of AENA’s Air traffic controllers” distributed in September 2013. This article is a summary of that report.
General knowledge of emergencies and unusual situationsAENA’s training for emergencies and unu-sual situations consists of a 6 hour session during which the following topics should be addressed: special complexity sectors, emergencies, unusual situations, crisis man-agement, ATS contingency plans, and inci-dents. Each regional ATS unit decides annu-ally which of these topics are addressed and how. In some cases, the trainers are unfamil-iar with the subject and/or they are unable to adequately prepare a subject, in absence of the necessary documentation.
Eurocontrol has regularly highlighted the importance of air traffic controller training when it comes to TCAS. However, this is not covered in the refresher-training programme provided to AENA's air traffic controllers. Instead, AENA overuses information circu-lars, which are typically distributed after a particular safety incident. They do not have any mechanism to monitor the effect of the information submitted.
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WHEN TOO LITTLE IS JUST NOT ENOUGH
Following a very serious in-cident in 2011, the Spanish CIAIAC recommended “that AENA makes sure that air traf-fic controllers have sufficient knowledge about the type and likelihood of failure in the auxiliary systems that they normally use to perform their tasks, and how these failures can be detected or tackled”.
Photo: ©Sergey Ilin|Dreamstime.com
4 Tower at Bilbao airport. Photo: ©IbanMontero|Dreamstime.com
This is followed by a classroom-based course, by an HR expert without any links to the specifi-cities of ATC nor to the specific functions and tasks performed by a tower supervisor or a ra-dar control supervisor. Both modules add up to a total du-ration of 25 hours without any OJT at all.
The contrast is extremely high, when compared to the supervi-sor course offered by the Ger-man ANSP (DFS): their super-visors need to pass a 4-week course in the training academy followed by a 5-month OJT training phase.
English language proficiency trainingAENA's current language pro-ficiency training programme does not meet ICAO specifica-tions and is, therefore, quite inadequate. It consists exclu-sively of an online course with-out any additional specialized supplementary training nor any classroom-based training, as stipulated by ICAO in Doc. 9835.
ConclusionOur main conclusion is that AENA's control staff receive a low quality and deficient train-ing, regarding both content and quantity.
AENA makes little use of the wide range of Eurocontrol and ICAO training programmes and contents, in a regulated, formal way. Instead, a mix of different programmes is gen-
cedure in which the candidate is allowed to try as many times as necessary until he/she hits the correct answer.
Instructors have no common established criteria. When they complete their progress reports, they do so interpreting a form, the meaning of which has not previously been clarified.
OJTI instructors do not receive regular re-fresher training, but they are required to pass an OJTI competence assessment every three years in order to renew their OJTI en-dorsement. Instructors are also included in regular working rosters in control rooms and towers. As a result, they often change sec-tors/positions within a single work shift, mak-ing it practically impossible for them to brief and debrief students.
Examiners get an online course that explains their functions. Although this specifies the operational competence goals to be as-sessed, they are simply given a 20-question quiz at the end, which is not enough to evalu-ate all the content and to demonstrate that examiners know the goals that are being assessed. The quiz doesn’t even distinguish between TWR and ACC While AENA has of-fered a more comprehensive training, based on a Eurocontrol course, it has yet to offer this training to all examiners...
Even if the supervisor function is currently not a specific endorsement, they are a key figure in running an operations room, even more so in crisis situations.
Despite this, AENA’s supervisor course con-tains an elaborate online theoretical module, which doesn’t differentiate between a tow-er supervisor and radar control supervisor. Candidates are asked to complete this first module unsupervised. They can retake the assessment test as many times as is needed, without penalties.
4 Focus on Spain
TRAINING VS. EFFICIENCY & SAFETY
However, and despite the fact that train-ing on Human Factors is currently included in the programme, AENA has not provided any training on these aspects, neither in the "refresher" courses nor in the 2013 Train-ing Plan, as reflected in the Local Single Sky Implementation Plan (LSSIP). AENA reports that there is no plan implemented for the in-tegration of Human Factors into the cycle of ATM systems.
Instructors, examiners and supervisorsCurrently, there are no control processes in place to determine the quality of training/assessment. The training of AENA's teach-ers, instructors and examiners is very poor, as there are no guidelines or standards for the training/assessment process. These peo-ple are usually not provided with appropri-ate working guidelines, goals or expected learning curves. Their personal methodology (or the department's methodology) is not monitored. In addition, a significant bulk of classroom-based OJTI training content has absolutely no practical application to an ATC environment. Without adequate training (e.g. in the use of office automation), it is left exclusively to the resourcefulness and back-ground of the teacher to make the best use of equipment and tools.
Throughout the training process, there are no defined phases for the OJT training pro-gram. This means that students do not know how close they are to fulfilling the learning objectives. The general impression is that the main goal during the learning process is reaching a sufficient training level so that students are able to minimally provide a safe ATC service, but there is no aspiration what-soever to train and prepare truly effective and efficient professionals who have enough resources to solve complex scenarios.
AENA provides an online training module and a classroom-based course, which lacks the required practical focus. It is just a theo-retical course with a flawed assessment pro-
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Photo: ©Jiří Kábele|Dreamstime.com
Photo: ©72soul|Dreamstime.com
bour ANSPs in the European environment. We have passed our concerns on to the rel-evant aviation authorities and we can see our arguments have raised a significant degree of concern in certain circles. Let’s hope that this will result in concrete improvements to the training of air traffic control personnel in Spain. ^
4 Focus on Spain
erated, which are divergent both in the content provided, and in how it is provided to air traffic controllers.
While AENA provides at least the minimum number of train-ing hours required by the Span-ish Air Safety Agency (AESA), the amount of time devoted to training is clearly insufficient to effectively cover the proposed content. What’s more, in the more than 180 safety recom-mendations that Spanish certi-fied commissions for the inves-tigation of aviation accidents and incidents (CEANITA and CIAIAC) have issued since 2010, quite a number are aimed at AENA's training departments. In other words, these commissions are both reporting deficiencies in AENA's training programmes for air traffic controllers, which is supposedly regulated by the Spanish Ministry of Develop-ment and the Spanish Air Safety Agency (AESA).
APROCTA first addressed this issue in De-cember 2012, when they published “General Analysis of the Per-ceived Quality Survey 2011 - AENA NA”. In this report, APROCTA already considered that the main reason for low perceived quality levels was the insufficient training of AE-NA's air traffic controllers, and recommended that regular, strict training plans should be designed in the short, medium and long term, including theo-retical and refresher training, as well as simulator training sessions that allow air traffic controllers to practice emer-gencies and unusual situations. Also, continuation training plans covering lan-guage proficiency and standard phraseology should be provided. In addition, the training should always be adapted to the specific job characteristics.
Regarding operational safety of ATC servic-es, APROCTA argued that the number of air traffic incidents reported in Spain is unaccep-table, especially when compared with neigh-
14
APROCTA first addressed this issue in De-cember 2012, when they published
gencies and unusual situations. Also,
4 Focus on Ghana
GHANAAN INTRODUCTION
15
^ by Philippe Domogala, Deputy Editor
DIRECTOR ATM, GHANA
been able to discuss them and solve most of the issues. The fact that we are all working in the same building helps a lot.
TC: One of the issues the control-lers highlighted was the absence of a back up system for the radar.AT: We are well aware of the is-sue. It’s interesting to note that no backup was actually fore-seen in the initial design. When the radar was introduced, it was meant to be in support of procedural control. So in fact, the radar was foreseen as the back up for procedural control. But it’s evolved that radar is now the main means of provid-ing separation and we really miss a back up for this. But that will be solved soon with intro-duction of a new system. ^
The Controller: What do you believe are the main issues for ATC in Ghana?Albert Taylor: One major issue we have is Is-sue implementing Just culture. We all agree it is necessary to improve safety, but it does not really tie in with our regional culture. Lots of education is still needed for both sides, but we will get there.Another main topic is the management structure. We urgently need to separate the regulator from the Air Traffic Services provid-er. We also need to replace the aging equip-ment and modernize the ATC part. Lastly, we should also invest in sharing experiences with our neighbors. More cross-border co-operation between States is the solution to many problems.
TC: How are the relations between the con-trollers and management?AT: The relations between controllers and management are generally good. Naturally, there are differences, but so far we’ve always
Albert is one of the very familiar faces within IFATCA. He was Regional Vice President Africa & Middle-East be-tween 1999 and 2007. He also cre-ated the African regional support
team and always very actively supported the entire region.For many years, he also acted as Chairman of Committee A during IFATCA Conferenc-es. Albert’s abilities were recognized by his peers and he became Director ATM of Ghana in 2008, a post he still holds today. Together with the Ghanaian Air Traffic Controllers’ As-sociation, he invited the IFATCA Executive Board to hold one of their board meetings in Accra last February.It also gave us the chance to ask him a few questions about Ghana.
The Republic of Ghana is located in West Africa along the Gulf of Guinea and Atlantic Ocean. It’s roughly the same size as Great Britain (240,000 km2) and has a population of around 26 million. Its main airport is lo-cated in the capital Accra and most of its air traffic control facilities are also located
there. In addition, they also have a large oceanic FIR extending south of the Equator over the South Atlantic Ocean.
Similar to a number of other African states, they have a fast growing economy and aviation sector. ^
INTERVIEW WITH ALBERT TAYLOR
What the controllers sayFrom talking to the controllers, it seems their main struggle is with communications: “Our worst problem are both VHF and HF radios: there’s lots of interference, mostly from local commercial radio stations“, according to one supervisor. “And the lack of refresher train-ing”, adds another controller.
Recently, their salaries were adjusted, lead-ing to a big improvement. The starting salary for a TWR controller is around 1500 USD per month. This increases to about 3000 USD for an area controller and even a bit more for supervisory staff. Despite this, controllers say they are still struggling, as the cost of living in Accra is rather high, especially compared to the rest of the country.
The reliability of the radar system appears to be another issue: “It sometimes quits and there’s no back up system. The only option is to immediately apply procedural separation, which sometimes creates a lot of delays. It happens too often for comfort”, according to a controller I spoke to. Another one add-ed: “It’s sometimes even more complicated, since not all controllers are trained to control procedurally. Having to work procedurally following a failure when not all controllers are trained to recover, is a serious issue for us”, adds another.
Accra towerThe Accra CTR goes 15 NM out and up to 1500ft. It serves a single runway (21-03), which is 3400m long. On average, they have around 150 movements per day at the air-
4 Focus on Ghana
ACCRA ACC AND TOWER^ by Philippe Domogala, Deputy Editor
The ACC The Accra Area Control Cen-tre (ACC) is located inside the same building as the tower and the CAA headquarters. Its equipment is that of a standard radar environment with strips and very basic automation.
The ACC has two en-route sec-tors: a north one and a south one. A third position provides Approach Control and there’s an additional Oceanic sec-tor. Their busiest period is midnight to 0400 and 1100 until 1400. Lateral separation
is 5NM on approach and 10 NM en-route. Most of the country is covered by radar cov-erage extending from about 200NM south to 400 NM north of Accra.
The ACC controls around 250 flights a day. They have about 60 controllers of which 50 are operational but overtime is not per-formed. At any one time there are normally 7 controllers on duty including the TWR ones. The Oceanic sector is open 24h/day and has ADS-B and CPDLC. Unfortunately only about half the aircraft using that airspace are equipped. There are plans to expand to multilateration – which only requires a tran-sponder. This appears to be a better solution in their current environment.
16
4 One building holds the Ghana CAA,ACC and tower. Photo: DP
4 Looking towards the approach sector in Accra ACC. Photo: DP
4 The en-route sector of Ghana’s ACC. Photo: DP
4 Focus on Ghana
port, which are between 23:00 and 05:00. The TWR is normally manned by 2 control-lers, who work in 7-hour shifts.
What the controllers say“All strips have to be hand written. It would be nice to have a strip printer or at least pre-printed strips available”, says the con-troller on duty. “Parking aircraft is an issue. Especially now, as we have major construc-tion and runway repairs ongoing”, says an-other controller. “Also too many flights are scheduled to arrive at the same time”, says another. Most European international carri-ers schedule their arrivals around the same period in the evening in Africa! Old habits die hard!
Biggest problems reported by the control-lers are the coordinations with the approach sector. They also don’t have access to an approach radar display screen. The absence of the APP radar picture in the TWR makes it very difficult for the controller to judge where the inbound traffic really is when they have departures and aircraft needing to backtrack. “The taxi way for Runway 21 doesn’t go all the way to the end of the runway. This means many aircraft, especially the long range ones have to do a backtrack on the last bit, if they want to use the full length“, reports a controller.
Last but not least and as in many parts of Af-rica, the weather is a constant concern, es-pecially during the rainy season and the Har-mattan winds period. This often complicates things, creating a lot of delays.
The issue of the missing taxiway lights – see the other article “Flying IFR in Africa“ in this issue – is a well-known problem between the airport operator and the CAA. The lights be-long to the airport company and their sense of urgency is not the same as that of ATC. There are also some missing or broken lights on the runway centerline. It is anticipated that all lights will be replaced when the con-struction work finishes. ^
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Management plans The Ghana CAA has plans to address most of the points raised in the arti-cle. Edward Baah, Deputy Director ATS told The Controller:
“Many of the issues mentioned here will be resolved when we introduce multi-lateration, or more correctly WAM (Wide Area Multi-lateration). The technical evaluation of tenders has just ended and the contract for the pro-ject will be awarded soon. As part of this contract, it’s foreseen to install a traffic display in the TWR to increase their situational awareness.The national communication authority is addressing the interference caused by commercial radio stations.While there is a refresher-training plan, its implementation has been de-ferred to 2014 because of the on-going area radar, aerodrome/approach control procedural and PBN training.The radar goes off for between 4-6 hours for routine maintenance no more than 3 times a year. On rare occasions the radar failure is due to power outages. This is one of the key reasons why WAM is being installed to com-plement the radar. Maintaining procedural proficiency in a radar environ-ment is a challenge but ATC operations ensures that there are experienced procedural controllers on each shift.
Finally, I would like to highlight that we have 15 student controllers due to qualify in March 2014. This will increase the number of active controllers from 50 to 65.”
4 Box of strips, ready to be archived.
Photo: DP
4 View from the Accra tower across the aprons. Photo: DP
Harmattan windThe Harmattan is a dry and dusty West African trade wind. Blowing in a north-westerly direction, it comes from the Sahara into the Gulf of Guinea and there-by right across Ghana. Between November and March, i.e. winter, it carries fine particles from the desert, which severely limit visibility and can block the sun for several days, a bit like a heavy haze. This is known as the Harmattan haze. Each year, it causes a large number of cancelled and diverted flights, each with the associated high cost for the airlines companies.
Photo: WWW
1500km. The cost of operating those flights is a fraction of what a certified aircraft like a Cessna 172 or 206 would cost! Since they build the aircraft themselves, they have a full and detailed understanding of the machine. This allows in-house trained staff to carry out maintenance and repairs. This is an ad-ditional trump over conventionally certified aircraft, which lowers the operating costs even further. Other organisations in West Af-rica operate various Cessna incarnations and often find it hard to find certified mechanics and parts, especially in the more rural areas.
Another huge advantage of this aircraft type is that they do not need airports to achieve their long-term aim of a network of commu-nity-maintained airstrips! The main goal is to be able to land our fully loaded 701, with a nurse and provisions, in the immediate vi-cinity of communities. The 701 needs less than 100m of unprepared surface for land-ing or take-off! Jonathan’s personal record is a take-off and landing in just under 30m! Known throughout the world as the “Sky Jeep”, this rugged little aircraft was defini-tively one of the best choices for this type of operations.
”We hope that the Ghana CAA will soon relax our weight limitations, in line with the EASA changes for Light Aircraft Pilot's Li-
4 Focus on Ghana
REACHING OUT WITH ULTRALIGHTS
^ by Philippe Domogala, Deptuty Editor
Nearly nine years ago, some 70km NNE from Accra, a group of enthusiasts led by Jonathan Porter – also known as Captain Yaw – founded an organisa-tion called WAASPS. Basing themselves at their own small airfield, Kpong Airfield, they wanted to use their passion for aviation to benefit a wide range of the Ghanaian popu-lation. In cooperation with a Non-Governmental Organisa-tion ”Medicine On The Move“, they bring affordable medical help and aerial supply drops to remote parts of the country.
But the path to this dream was not an easy one.
“It took many years of lobby-ing, regulatory changes and other efforts to be able to open Kpong Airfield in November 2005“, says Jonathan. “Once that was solved, we needed to find an aircraft that would fit our needs in the environment in which we live and operate. For bush operations in the tropics it’s best to operate a tricycle, braced, high-wing, tractor, Short-Take-Off-and-Landing (STOL) aircraft. That narrows down the options: while there are many aircraft on the market that could be used in develop-ing nations, there are particular constraints that are essential to take into account. One of those is fuel. There is no avgas available throughout Ghana, so we needed an aircraft with an engine that runs on normal
car fuel (so-called mogas). Probably the best aircraft engine in this category is the Rotax 912 UL – 80Hp. We joke that you could uri-nate in the tanks and the engine will keep on flying. Out of necessity, we’ve had to feed the 912 some rough fuels over the years, but it just runs. Of course, we normally try to feed it clean 95 octane (RON), but at times, we’ve been forced to use local 89RON (87AKI) – or even a mix to make it go further.”
After deciding on an engine, WAASPS start-ed their quest to find the perfect airframe. It was self-evident to go for an ultra light (or LSA class aircraft) and after the Zenith CH701 came out as the ideal choice. It is the most copied aircraft in that category around. And for good reasons: it can be built from plans, or you can purchase different sections in kit form. It is relatively straightforward to build and it’s made of 6061-T6 aluminium, which is a very corrosion-resistant material. As such, it’s ideal for tropical applications. On top of that, it’s very easy to fly and with thousands flying already around the world, it made the acceptance by our Ghana CAA easier. Since 2005, they have built eight aircraft and have two others in advanced building stages.
When fitted with the Rotax 912iS (100Hp) engine, a Zenith airframe uses as little as 12 litre an hour. This gives them a range of over
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AMBITIOUS PROJECT TO UNLOCK RURAL AREAS IN GHANA
4 CH701 on a health/education drop run.
All Photos: WAASPS
taken on a role as a Technical Advisor, and works in devel-opment projects. "Patricia is already a flying instructor for the LSA licences here in Gha-na; she builds planes, welds, designs aircraft parts and is a really amazing woman.... in fact, she is so amazing that I married her 18 months ago!“, smiles Jonathan.
For more info on WAASPS visit: www.waasps.com and www.medicineonthemove.org ^
tool for development and inspiration!“, says Jonathan.
Currently, WAASPS is focusing on one day exposure programs principally in the engi-neering side (aviation and general engineer-ing) due to the clear need for more engineers than pilots in development of rural Africa!
WAASPS has recently appointed a new Man-aging Director - Patricia Mawuli. She is a true Ghanaian from a rural area. She’s fully trained at Kpong Airfield and was the first woman to qualify for a Ghanaian national pilots licence. She’s also the first woman in the world to be iRMT certified by ROTAX. Jonathan has
4 Focus on Ghana
cense arrangements”, continues Capt. Yaw. He thinks it will be the real future, and bring amazing positive changes to aviation in West Africa.... Main obstacle is probably to get past the bureaucracy barrier that exists eve-rywhere in Africa. Once a weight increase would be approved, they plan to build the 701's big brother: the Zenith 750 - another perfect aircraft for rural development... Even if the wheels of administration can be slow sometimes, Jonathan acknowledges that Ghana is really far ahead of many other na-tions in our continent, when it comes to the aviation sector. I do sometimes wonder if African aviation leadership really appreci-ates the true worth of light aviation as a
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What does WAASPS stand for?Nothing. It goes back a long way. Whilst seeking approvals to start the operation we spent about three years running around offices several times per week showing a presentation called ‘ West African Aviation Solutions Proposal – or WAASP.In an area where this class of aircraft had never really been given its place, bundled up with the bigger toys, it was necessary to establish that air-craft could be built, maintained and operated and local pilots taught a more affordable Na-tional Licence.Finally that advocacy work paid off and we were given the go ahead to create the op-eration… and so we needed a name. We had some really good ones, then as we were discussing it at the then Minis-try of Aviation, one official told us ‘no matter what name you give it you will always be the ‘WAASP’s people.
4 CH701 on a health/education drop run.
4 Kpong airfi eld during the rainy season.
4 Kpong airfi eld in the dry season.
lished on ILS on long final was next, requiring us to hold a bit longer.
Fortunately the closest Cb was far enough away. The controller finally cleared us to ex-tend the downwind for Runway 21. We’re told to follow the 737, which we spotted abeam. After turning base behind, we land-ed in the middle of the 3400m runway to stay above the wake turbulence. After taxiing, we parked ourselves just behind an Airbus 319, which had also just arrived.
Discussing the peculiarities of operating a flying school in this environment with Luis, I discovered that it is not easy. Weather, especially during the rainy season, causes many flight cancellations. Holding around the airport for long periods, to give priority to commercial operations is not uncommon. They try to schedule their training early in the morning (from 06:30) before the main traffic rush. They also have a large training area not too far away above flat ground, which gives them some flexibility.
Can anyone fly VFR in a certified aircraft in Ghana? Yes in theory, but the difficulties in getting avgas make it very restrictive. Mish aviation imports its own avgas from the USA at huge cost 950 USD per barrel of 200 li-tres, or 4,75 USD/liter! They wouldn’t object to selling some to the occasional passing air-craft, but outside Accra, you’re out of luck.
Many thanks to Albert, Capt. Ibrahim Mshe-lia and Luis, for another experience in a dif-ferent environment. Here’s hoping that the Ghanaian CAA continues to improve its infra-structure to help develop General Aviation in their country. ^
4 Focus on Ghana
FLYING VFR IN GHANA^ by Philippe Domogala, Deputy Editor
General aviation in Ghana is not yet very developed, but it is getting there. A first restraint is the infrastructure: there aren’t too many airports around and the terrain is generally very in-hospitable. A second important factor is the weather: Ghana lies just North of the Equator, which means that tropical con-vergence thunderstorms are never far away. This is especial-ly the case during the two rain seasons, April to mid-July and a weaker one in October.
The third issue is the non-availability of avgas in Ghana. To make matters worse, apart from the main aiport in Accra, no other airfield has runway lights. This means that it’s vi-tal to depart and land before 18:00 – the proximity to the Equator means sunset is al-ways around 18: 00 throughout the year. There are also no VFR maps of the country, and no visual approach charts (VAC) for Accra airport.
Having said that, we are in Africa, where eve-rything is possible. Via Albert Taylor, I got in contact with Capt Ibrahim Mshelia. He is the CEO of Mish Aviation, the only privately owned flying school in the country. Mish op-erates 2 Cessna 172s and one twin engine Piper Aztec in Accra to train groups of ab-initio pilots for Ghana, but also neighbouring countries; Nigeria being the most important.
We arranged a flight but unfortunately on the only day available in our hectic schedule, the weather was far from ideal: large tropi-cal Cbs and a few showers passing across the airport. We nevertheless managed to find a window for a short flight around the airport – going further was not an option, since the closest airport we could divert to, Komasi, is nearly 2 flight hours away! My instructor, Luis, a Ghanaian trained as a pilot in Canada. And Tatiana (IFATCA’s Office Manager in Montreal) decided to accompany us, for her first flight ever in a single engine aircraft!
Take-off was uneventful, but overflying a large city such as Accra at 1000 ft is always interesting. The return was more complex: as we reported downwind, we were told by ATC to make a few orbits to allow the ap-proach of a Dash 8. A Boeing 737 estab-
20
4 On board with Luis the instructor and Tatiana in the back!
All Photos: DP
4 Overhead Accra airport.
4 Parked right behind an Airbus A319.
ETOPS over the Sahara Just south of the Niamey FIR border, I noticed the cap-tain switched on the Auxil-iary Power Unit (APU). I had never seen any pilot starting an APU in cruise at 38.000ft. He explained that we were entering an ETOPS area and procedures required to have
Since the introduction of RVSM was delayed 3 years to give countries a chance to improve communications, I wondered why it was still so bad today. According to the Captain, communications were tip-top in September 2008 when African RVSM was introduced: “They were perfectly adequate that time, but they soon deteriorated again. It’s still better than it was before, but far from ideal. Because of that, we kept the broadcast and the offset.”
4 Africa
To attend the IFATCA Executive Board meet-ing in Ghana, I booked a flight from Frank-furt. Through an old friend from the IFALPA ATC committee days, I managed to arrange a cockpit pass for both legs. This gave me a chance to observe African ATC first hand.
Broadcasting blind and 1NM offset Flying over Africa is quite different from fly-ing over any other part of the world. The huge distances and the unavailability of communications over large desolate areas – desert or jungle – the underdeveloped in-frastructure, combined with booming traffic, make it unique. To top it all off, the airlines have implemented the so-called In-Flight Broadcast Procedure (IFBP) and lateral off-set, to “complement“ ATC. The supposedly temporary measure was introduced over 15 years ago and coordinated by IATA. Despite a number of modernization projects, includ-ing the introduction of RVSM in 2008, the procedure is still very much part of flying across this vast continent…
Once we went south of Algeria, we lost VHF communications. That’s the key to switch to HF, with its characteristic static to try and contact Niamey. Initially we got no response, but after persisting for some 15 minutes, we got in contact. They even had us on radar! Despite this, about 10 min before entering their FIR, we tuned to 126.9, which is the agreed frequency on which to broadcast our position to anyone who wanted to hear. The F/O also tweaked the FMS and set us offset right of track by 1 NM…. Flying offset while under radar was new to me, but across Af-rica, it appears to be a ‘best practice’.
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IFR FLYING ACROSS AFRICA
^ by Philippe Domogala, Deputy Editor
A COCKPIT VIEW, ANNO 2014
4 Selecting the 126,90 IFBP frequency. 4 The IFB procedures as published by IATA.
4 The IFBP area of application.
All Photos: DP
places nearby that can be considered safe to divert to. So in fact, you are never 100% sure you can get to your destination until the wheels touch down on the tarmac.”
But generally, all crews I spoke to say that things are gradually improving in Africa. With every passing year, more and more problems are addressed and slowly but surely, the Af-rican continent becomes safer to fly in. Soon, at least from an ATC point of view, it will be on par with other regions. Missing taxi lights in Accra Upon entering Ghana airspace, the crew visibly relaxed: ATC has radar and is quite efficient. We were number 1 to land and afterwards, the pilots are full of praise for the Ghanaians. When we vacate the runway however, there was only a dark void with only 3 blue lights! The rest of the lights don’t work and it’s very difficult to distinguish the taxi way. “The lights have been out of service for years”, says the captain. “There’s a NOTAM, which is re-issued on a regular basis.” It’s quite the contrast to the very professional ATC service. I promise the crew I’ll check this with my colleagues.
Many thanks to both crews for the arrange-ments. It was a truly remarkable experience. ^
4 Africa
3 separate generator sources. Since the aircraft had only two engines and did not have a Ram Air Turbine (a little fan on most long-range aircraft that
pops out to drive an electric genera-tor), we needed to start the APU. When I remarked that we’re actu-ally over land and that there must be dozens of air-ports nearby we can divert to, he explained further: “There are indeed plenty of airports, but we cannot guarantee that we can contact them, that they will allow us to land or even what the weather is like in those airports. So that means we need to apply ETOPS pro-cedures, which re-quires us to switch on the APU… Last year we had a scheduled flight to
Libreville. During the preparation for the de-scent, we were told by ATC that the airport would close for 1 hour because of a presi-dential flight. This made fuel management an immediate issue, as there are not many other
22
On the return flight, we could have left Accra on time. Looking at the weather charts however, the crew calculated that the 15-20 knot tailwind would bring us to Frankfurt at half past 4 in the morning. Thanks to environmental constraints, landing in Frank-furt is not allowed before 05:00. So we requested ATC to delay our departure by some 20 minutes. As the Captain explained: “Such a delay on the ground is not a problem in Accra. But try and explain to JFK Ground in New York that you want to wait on some congested taxiway or holding point in the middle of the afternoon rush, because you might arrive too early at home base!”
We took-off with an estimated arrival in Frankfurt of 04:55. ”It’s better to arrive at 04:55 to be number 1 than to arrive a few minutes later and be number 10 or 15 for landing”, said the F/O. On arriving in FRA, we were the third a/c waiting for the first 05:00 slot. But as the other two were 747s, they put our aircraft ahead of the heavy’s to avoid extra wake turbulence spacing. The two available parallel runways have dependent ap-proaches, as they are too close to each other. While there is a
third runway, it can only be used after 06:00 because of environ-mental reasons again!
During our approach, we had the airport in sight for miles. To make absolutely sure we didn’t land before 05:00am, we were given some so-called “entertainment vectors”, giving us a sce-nic tour of the wider Frankfurt area. This probably woke up some people who would never have heard us if we had made a straight in approach. The controller neatly vectored us a last time for ILS 25L, and we touched down at exactly 05:00am! One of the B747s was just 1 NM final for the RWY25C.
It is ironic to see how these environmental rules are conflicting with other ‘environmental’ issues. Emission trading schemes, performance plans, etc. tell everyone to reduce CO2 by efficient routes, directs, continuous descent approaches, etc. But in or-der to satisfy others, aircraft have to vectored all over the sky, or held on taxiways, to avoid making noise near a group of people who bought houses near an airport long after the airport was built! Welcome back to 21st century Europe!!
4 Flying 1 NM offset to the right.
AND BACK IN EUROPE …Returning to the joys of European (so-called) civilization
ing implementation and offers assistance to the controllers who are using it. Given current staffing levels, this balance is difficult to maintain at facilities of all sizes. As air traffic continues to in-crease, the United States can-not afford additional delays in modernizing the NAS. Unfor-tunately, insufficient staffing is preventing adequate assess-ments of how new programs and technologies are working at some of the busiest and most complex air traffic fa-cilities. NATCA will continue to advocate for increased air traffic controller hiring as we navigate the staffing issues exacerbated by the current budget environment and re-tirement bubble. Without a significant investment in the United States’ air traffic control workforce, there simply won’t be enough people available to help NextGen, and the NAS, reach its full potential. ^
all Academy trainees graduate and the na-tionwide trainee attrition rate (those not able to reach full certification) at air traffic control facilities averages 25 percent each year. The NAS is only now beginning to recover from the unprecedented attrition of certified air traffic controllers between 2006 and 2009 and is once again facing an ill-timed exodus of veteran controllers. This staffing crunch presents a challenge to the continued implementation and train-ing for NextGen. The FAA needs air traffic controllers - the end users of these new pro-grams and technologies - to run tests before the new programs and technologies are fully implemented. Unfortunately, many facilities are inadequately staffed and cannot cover for controllers who need to be out testing a program. Testing of the Closely Spaced Parallel Operations (CSPO), a procedure that would increase capacity in the sky, reduce delays and improve safety, presents a prime example of the challenges NextGen faces. The FAA was forced to cut its operational assessments of the CSPO program in half because it needed controllers with specific requirements to do the testing. The facilities at which those controllers work did not have the staff to fill their positions while they were conducting the tests. NextGen implementation also faces a chal-lenge when it comes to training controllers on how to use the programs and equipment. To do so, multiple controllers are taken off the regular schedule of working traffic and are put on a training schedule for the facility. At inadequately staffed facilities, these train-ing sessions can cost the FAA millions of dol-lars in overtime.
It also takes an additional team to imple-ment a program. For example, En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM) typically requires a team of 36 controllers to success-fully implement the technology at a facility. Three to four ERAM subject matter experts facilitate the implementation, in addition to the controllers who actually test the new pro-gram. This team monitors the program dur-
Strong collaboration between the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the air traffic control workforce, represented by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), has resulted in the development and implementation of NextGen, the next phase in air traffic control technology. We are proud of how far we’ve come and excited about how far we can go. However, a poten-tial air traffic workforce shortage threatens to challenge this progress. Currently, over 3,000 air traffic controllers serving the National Airspace System (NAS) are eligible to retire. Only 1,500 control-lers are currently training to replace them, a process that takes two to three years. Each month controllers retire and are not replaced. Due to the impacts of sequestra-tion and the federal government shutdown last year, hiring, training and many NextGen initiatives were temporarily halted. The nine-month hiring freeze is over now but it will take several years to reverse the damage. Only 1,200 to 1,400 trainees can go through the FAA Academy in one year. Be-yond classroom instruction, additional train-ing requires a total of two to three years in an air traffic control facility. Furthermore, not
4 Americas
U.S. AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL STAFFING
^ by Paul Rinaldi, NATCA President
23
A CHALLENGE FOR NEXTGEN
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all Academy trainees graduate and the na-tionwide trainee attrition rate (those not able to reach full certification) at air traffic control facilities averages 25 percent each year. The NAS is only now beginning to recover from
Sochi’s existing airport has two converging runways: RWY06/24 and RWY02/20. There were no other options in the vicinity: the clos-est airports in the region, such as Krasnodar, Gelendzhik and Anapa could only serve as alternates, as they are too far from Sochi to be able to practically arrange transportation.
More importantly, the airport at Sochi has the Black Sea on one side and a mountain range on the other. The season in which the Games were held generally sees thunderstorm activ-ity over the Black sea, which can of course im-pact the traffic flows. But the mountains cre-
4 Europe
WINTER OLYMPICS & ATC
^ by Eduard Kolodnyy, ATC instructor of training center Rostov-on-Don, Russia
Our whole country dreamed of bringing these Olympic Games to Russia. It was an il-lusion to think it was going to be easy. And the reality of it all from an ATC point of view, you will find in this article.
In 2007, the city of Sochi in Russia was des-ignated by the International Olympic Com-mittee to host the 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. Located along the shores of the Black Sea near the Caucasus Mountains, Sochi is quite different from the previous cit-ies that have hosted the Winter Olympics. Surprisingly, at least for this type of event, is that the area enjoys a subtropical climate. And crucially, the entire infrastructure had to be built from scratch.
From an ATC point of view, the main diffi-culty – and challenge – was coming up with a way to safely and efficiently bring the aircraft with athletes, officials, fans and journalists to Sochi in a relatively short period. And to get them back home afterwards of course in the same manner.
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DREAM, ILLUSION, AND REALITY
EUROPE NETWORK MANAGER’S PREPARATIONS
by Jon Wall, EUROCONTROL Network Operations Management
For the ATM community, the preparation processes for The Sochi Winter Olympic Games started more than a year ago, when representatives of the Moscow ATM Centre (MAT-MC) visited the Network Man-ager (NM) for the first time in January 2013.
Having made an operational review of the special event process together with the MATMC and having consid-ered all possible scenarios, NM anticipated that the Sochi Win-ter Olympics could be man-aged without disruption to air traffic management network operations.
Since October 2013, the Net-work Manager Operations Centre (NMOC) has held week-ly teleconferences with experts from both sides on strategic planning, strategic operations and ACC supervisors.
4 A view inside the new Sochi tower.
4 Outside view of the new Sochi tower, with the mountains in the background.Photo: Albert Velichko
Photo: Alexei Morozov
Jeppesen was contracted by the State Air Traffic Management Corporation of the Rus-sian Federation to conduct a capacity anal-ysis of the Sochi Aerodrome. A new tower was also commissioned, as was a new ATC system that supports the OLDI protocol for electronic coordination. A modern ATC Training Simulator was also installed in Sochi, which enabled the controllers to follow an intensive, heavy traffic training program. Various scenarios of adverse succession of events are studied and simulated.
Strict slot adherence procedures were im-plemented and last but not least, additional air traffic controllers were stationed at Sochi to cope with the demand. All this was made possible not only through the excellent work at the Main Air Traffic Management Center, but also due to the excellent coordination between the various services and depart-ments at Sochi airport. It was all driven by everyone’s enthusiasm and motivation to do everything possible for our Winter Olympic Games in Russia.
The last day of the Winter Olympics (23rd February) saw 575 movements at Sochi air-port, which is an all time record. At the time of writing the article, the Paralympics Games had yet to begin, so in a way, we’re only half-way and a lot of serious work still awaits. As such, I don't want to run ahead of myself, but it looks as if we managed more than OK. It gave those involved a vast experience in preparing and carrying out such a largescale operation. As such, we’ve started looking towards Russia hosting the 2018 FIFA World Cup with the confidence that we can make it work! ^
4 Europe
ate the most limiting obstacle: because only RWY06 and RWY02 are available for landing, and RWY24 and RWY20 are for take-off, ar-rival and departure procedures are operating only in opposite directions! As you can imag-ine, this called for some innovative solutions…
After weighing the pros and cons, we decid-ed to leave the mountains where they were: after all, they were a necessary element for the various competitions! We closely looked at the experience of other hosting cities over the last years, including Vancouver, Beijing and London. Thankfully, all these cities had accumulated a very rich experience. This al-lowed us to gain a lot of knowledge and ad-vice, even if we were often envious of their pre-existing infrastructure as well as their experiences with heavy traffic flows. The sim-plest would have been to simply transpose all this to Sochi, but as you can imagine, this was practically impossible.
Looking at the experience in London for ex-ample: they had five large international air-ports near the games, with another twenty or so in the wider area that could be used as contingency or overflow. Without this, we had no other option but to improve and modernise the existing facilities.
From an ATC point of view, several initiatives were taken in anticipation of the expected dra-matic traffic increase. Alongside improvements in the airspace structure, new procedures were worked out and implemented. These included new arrival and departure routes (STARs and SIDs) and establishing new holding patterns. Various scenarios involving multiple problem situations were studied and simulated in order to come up with mitigation plans.
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DREAM, ILLUSION, AND REALITY
Thanks to this preparatory work for the Sochi Olympic Games, we have also been able to complete ongoing work on the activation of Flight Update Messages (FUM), working closely with the MAT-MC. In January 2014, NMOC began sending FUM messages on flight status and estimated landing times to European airports.
First Sector Activation (FSA) messages are also being sent from Moscow for all flights overflying the Russian Fed-eration since 10 January 2014. This gives an additional two to three hours’ notice for flights entering the NM Initial Flight Plan System (IFPS) Zone. In parallel to these, the departure (DEP) messages received for all flights departing from the Russian Federation have now increased to 98%.
In terms of pretactical opera-tions, the Data Demand Re-pository – which receives flight intentions and airport slot data from Moscow – provided earlier and more accurate vis-ibility on the flights operated between Europe and the Rus-sian Federation; it is a vital support to efficient operations planning.
As part of the special proce-dure for Sochi, Moscow for-mally requested the Network Manager to activate the flight planning suspension proce-dure, which consists of sus-pending flights that have not been filed in line with their ar-rival slot.
Since early February 2014, it became possible for the MAT-MC to send rejection mes-sages to airspace users and to request the NM IFPS staff to suspend a flight plan. The pro-cedure was retained through-out March so as to cover the Paralympics Games as well. ^
4 Aerial view of Sochi airport, with the runway layout. Photo: Google and Eduard Kolodnyy
Photo: Alexei Morozov
Lucia, representing the PLC, and myself as member of the TOC, presented the paper.
A theoretical viewThe Human Factors theory which studies the integration of humans in complex systems, defines two concepts that are of key impor-tance in the assessment of a system. These concepts are usability and acceptability.
Usability refers to whether a system is easy to use, easy to learn and efficient for the human to apply for performing a certain task. Acceptability refers to whether the humans coming into contact with the system accept its existence and the way in which it operates.
4 Technology
PUT A CONTROLLER IN YOUR TEAM
^ by Ignacio Baca, Chairman IFATCA Technical and Operations Committee
It is a fact that Air Traffic Con-trol is evolving to be more and more dependent on tech-nology. As the traffic levels increase, the evolution from procedural control to using sur-veillance systems is a given. At the same time, flight plan data becomes impossible to man-age without computers. New requirements arise, such as flow management, making technol-ogy even more essential. Rou-tine tasks, such as inter-sector coordination can be more eas-ily performed with the help of automated systems. The trend to an increased level of automa-tion and technology assistance is clear, even more so if we look at ambitious projects like SESAR or NEXTGEN: these are determining the shape of future Air Traffic Management.
The omni-presence of technol-ogy in every discussion or eve-ry paper about the future of our profession often gives the impression that it’s the answer to every problem. It is undeni-able that technology is neces-sary in an advanced air traffic control system. But control-lers using such systems often complain about the mismatch between what the supposedly-
state-of-the-art automation does compared to what they actually need it to do… In nu-merous cases, a new and expensive develop-ment is even rejected by their users, who find that it does not fulfil their needs. In extreme cases, they even feel it is an unnecessary and judge it even dangerous. This can cause fric-tion between management – having invested money – and engineers and developers who see their brainchild labelled as useless, a nui-sance or even a liability.This subject was studied jointly by the Techni-cal and Operations Committee (TOC) and the Professional and Legal Committee (PLC) and presented during the 51st Annual Conference held in Kathmandu in March 2012. Felice de
26
THE ROLE OF CONTROLLERS IN SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT
4 Figure A – Most issues are detected and solved in the development phase when a correct planning allows users to be involved in such stage.
Photo: Licocavok | wikipedia
4 Figure B – Bad planning dramatically increases the cost of fi xing issues later on.
The development of the ERAM system in the USA shows simi-lar lessons. Initial on-site tests showed the system as not ma-ture for operational use. The delay and increased costs were tackled by increasing the par-ticipation of Air Traffic Control-lers in the development of the system following the advise of an assessment from MITRE (see http://goo.gl/hB95Qq). This recommends "involve-ment of ATC workforce as early as possible helps iden-tify usability and operational issues". NATCA is currently completely involved in the pro-ject and news from the USA is that ERAM is finally on its path to success.
On the other hand some exam-ples may be found of air traffic controllers being involved in the development of a system since the very beginning. A good example is the change to a strip-less system in Geneva ACC in a process that took only 18 months thanks to a perfect integration of control-lers and engineers in a single development team.
The best way to understand the differences between both ways of development is to talk with the people involved in the process. Interestingly, when the system has been devel-oped with no involvement of final users, the conversation goes around the problems that appeared due to the lack of understanding between controllers and engineers. But when the system has been de-veloped by a combined team the talk is usually centered on how both groups were able to finally understand each other's needs and the great deal that they learned from their team-mates. A controller summa-rized his experience in this way: “At the beginning controllers and engineers were using the same words but not the same language. We needed some time but finally we began to understand each other's needs and way of thinking”. ^
be found in the document Human Factors in the Development of Air Traffic Management Systems, issued by Eurocontrol in 1998. It shows a large number of issues are detected and solved in the development phase when a correct planning allows users to be involved in such stage. A deficient planning means that most of the human performance issues are detected in later stages when the system is already implemented.The high costs of fixing such issues in an on-line system can be avoided by involving the end users in the design and development of the system. This involvement is sometimes prevented by a short-sighted point of view because of the high cost of using an expen-sive resource such as a controller is in work not directly related to air traffic control. The management dilemma is: should some con-trollers be involved in the first stages of de-velopment meaning a high expense at the beginning of the project or should the sys-tem be developed without advice from oper-ational personnel and take the risk of partial and expensive redesigns when the system is in operation?The answer, according the same document from Eurocontrol is in Figure B, which shows the cost of detecting and resolving human performance issues. We can see how deficient planning dramatically increases the costs as a project advances. A correct planning, includ-ing final users in the first phases of the devel-opment means a higher cost at the beginning but saving money in the long time.
To summarize, a development team benefits from including people with different profiles: system developers (typically software en-gineers), end users as air traffic controllers, managers responsible for the development process and human factor specialists to en-sure the correct integration of human factors.
Some examplesTheory is always valuable but often it is ex-perience what really helps to understand the consequences of one or other way of development when a new system is intro-duced. A recent example is the introduction of VAFORIT in the Karlsruhe ACC. While this development, which contains both a Radar Processing System and a Flight Data Process-ing System, was successfully implemented in 2011 the road to success was somehow dif-ficult. The project, initially scheduled to be operational in 2004 was delayed a number of times. In 2008, during the final phase known as SAT (Site Acceptance Testing) the system was found as not acceptable. A partial rede-sign was needed with the help of a task force involving some controllers, software develop-ers, one flight data specialist, etc. to finally de-velop the product, which is currently in place.
4 Technology Technology
The second concept, acceptability, clearly shows when great changes are implement-ed in an automation system or a new one is being introduced. The natural reluctance to change routine makes the users of the sys-tem uncomfortable and even threatened. The way to manage the change is therefore crucial. Communication becomes of the ut-most importance to explain the reasons for the change and turn the perception of threat into opportunity.
Another way to increase acceptability is through an early involvement of the users of the systems (the controllers in our case) to re-duce the resistance to change. It is never too soon to include users in the loop even as ear-ly as the first phases of the system develop-ment. This strategy is a cornerstone to reach success not only in relation to improve ac-ceptability but also usability. When the final users are involved in the design phases, the human performance problems are detected in the very first stages of the system life cy-cle instead of during operation. Figure A can
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IFATCA policy:After the paper developing this sub-ject was presented to committee B, the following policy was included in the Technical and Professional Manu-al of the Federation. Operational controllers shall be in-volved in the design, development and implementation of new ATM systems. Their role should include:• Establish user requirements.• To participate in the risk
assessment process.• To validate the system.• To provide feedback in the fur-
ther development of the system.
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Decision making on drafting rules in Europe is part of a wider democratic process. The final decision on whether to adopt the pro-posal in an Opinion and turn it into an EU legislation (or not), does not lie with EASA, IFATCA or any other organisation, but rather it is the prerogative of the European Com-mission discussing with the Member States, and then overseen by democratically elect-ed bodies i.e. the European Parliament and Council of Ministers. Through this democrat-ic process there might be some changes to the original text, but it is normal in a legisla-tive procedure.
The European aviation regulatory environ-ment is evolving into a more performance oriented one. This departure from a pure prescriptive system can sometimes lead to misconceptions. For example, there is no system of ‘self-assessment’ replacing check-outs or other reduction in standards. The existing system of dedicated or continuous assessments is maintained. Flexibility does not mean changing or reducing the required minimums. It is the opposite: on top of the minimum requirements comes another set, based on safety performance. And if the min-imums do not exist, EASA proposes them.
ATCO training and licensing is a good case to expand on this point. At this moment the applicable common rule does not cover the entire subject. Currently the quality and ef-fectiveness of training is based on the pro-cesses and the content to be taught. EASA is proposing to establish at least a minimum duration for Unit training, in substance based on existing ICAO requirements. Following in-ternational best practice, the exact contents, duration and other aspects of the course are left to the ANSPs to decide and for their su-pervising authorities to approve. At the end of the process, the Agency exercises stand-ardisation inspections on the work of those authorities to ensure a level ‘playing field’.
The results of each EASA inspection of the authorities mentioned above, are dissemi-
4 Opinion
WHAT EASA MEANS FOR SAFETY IN EUROPE’S SKIES
The opinion piece on EASA in the previous issue of The Controller (December 2013) created quite a stir. We invited EASA to respond, which they kindly did.
Since 2009, the responsibilities of the Euro-pean Aviation Safety Agency, EASA, include the remit of Air Traffic Management. At the same time EASA became responsible for the ‘safety’ pillar of the Single European Skies project, unifying tasks at a European level that were spread over several organisations. Below we look at how the Agency contrib-utes to the safety of the European aviation system.
One of the main objectives of the Agency is to ensure a uniform implementation of rules throughout Europe. The safety objectives as mentioned in the rules apply to all. How to achieve the objectives is written in Accept-able Means of Compliance (AMCs). The sys-tem allows to propose and define alternative AMC’s to adapt to the operational needs of the operator. These ‘alternative means’ are accepted only if it is first proven they ensure at least the same level of safety as the one provided by the Means originally proposed by EASA. In other words, it is accepted that there can be many ways of getting to the destination, but there is no compromise on the destination itself: Safety. Therefore, the EASA system is not based just on describing what to do to achieve ‘safety’ but rather on prescribing what needs to be achieved.
Creating such a system, where regulations do not inhibit innovation, but provide flex-ibility to account for different local condi-tions, cannot be done by EASA alone. This system requires the continuous input from all stakeholders to be effective. To this end, IFATCA, as an important stakeholder, has participated in numerous rulemaking groups and relevant meetings on all ATM topics, in particular in ATCO licensing. Unquestion-ably, the opinion of IFATCA has contributed to the shaping of the current Regulation and the newly proposed one.
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EASA RESPONSE TO OPINION PIECE IN THE CONTROLLER
^ by Jules Kneepkens, Rulemaking Director at EASA
In conclusion, experience and common sense have shown that simply describing a set of amount of hours as a safety require-ment is inadequate on its own. Number of hours, number of persons or any metric is a ‘means to an end’ and not an ‘end’ in itself (i.e. safety). EASA uses regulations as an ‘end’ to be achieved by using means (for example AMCs) which are based on ac-cepted practices and by respecting expertise and experience. Of course, there is always a ‘minimum’ described, below which no one is allowed to go. But if we want to further improve safety, achieving only the minimum cannot be the ultimate aim! EASA through its rules and guidance material motivates going beyond the minimum and always giv-ing safety a priority. We believe this is the best way to motivate organisations to utilise their in-house experience, implement best practices and ensure there is no temptation to trade-off between cost and safety. This effort relies on the input and trust from ex-perienced, but also, properly informed Air Traffic Controllers on what EASA does and what this means for safety in Europe, in order to continue working together towards safer European skies. ^
4 Opinion
nated to all other authorities, including the European Commission. Due to the legal framework and in order to support ‘just cul-ture’, EASA is not allowed to disseminate this information to the public or to the me-dia. These audits are monitoring the imple-mentation of safety regulations through the performance of national authorities. They do not certify training, thus they do not contain parameters, which someone could use to compare training organisation.
Licenses issued by any of the European au-thorities are by definition valid throughout Europe as part of the unconditional recog-nition of documents, which allows mobility of European citizens. This is one of the main principles of the EU. One of the priorities for EASA, mentioned in its founding regulation, is to ensure a high level of safety and not to accept any solution that compromises it, no matter how cost-effective it is. Of course, EASA shall not stop any cost efficiency meas-ures, when these do not impact safety. When EASA is made aware of any deviations, it has an extensive arsenal of measures and correc-tive actions to take that ensure the adjust-ment is immediate and effective.
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by Jules Kneepkens, Rulemaking Director at EASA
In conclusion, experience and common
From my point of view, the conference was extremely interesting and dealt with many valuable aspects of what is and should re-main the most element of aviation: safety. Given the apparent success of this first con-ference of its sort held in London, one can anticipate that it will not be the last. Perhaps there can be slightly less focus on the panel discussions and extending the time foreseen for debates involving all attendees. These were very lively and inspiring and would con-tribute to the overall experience of a future event.
From an air traffic controllers’ point of view, I can highly recommend taking part in a con-ference such as this. The relevance of the topics dealt with cannot be underestimated by anyone, and that included ATCOs. While safety is omni-present in our world, it can be very helpful to discuss openly and frankly on the different aspects of safety. The experi-ences can be brought back to the working level, though we have to face the fact that it is not easy to turn delightful theory into ef-fective practice. A lot of it also depends on the attitude and priorities of the different companies that deal with safety in air traffic management and air traffic control.
Speaking for the delegates of the Austrian Air Traffic Controllers Association, I’d like to thank those who organized and supported this conference and those who made it into such a successful event! ^
4 Safety
SAFETY IN ATC CONFERENCE
The conference was organized by FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, supported by FLIGHTGLOBAL, and sponsored by GAEL Ltd. and ATCA. This first Safety in Air Traffic Control Conference took place from 3rd – 4th of December 2013 in the Marriott Hotel, near London Heathrow, UK.
In all, some 90 people from around the world were present, including representatives from EUROCONTROL, NATS, SESAR JU, IFATCA, Serco-DANS, Brit-ish Airways and Honeywell Aerospace.
Peter Dumont, President & CEO of ATCA made the open-ing statements. Tony Licu, Head of the Safety Unit of EU-ROCONTROL, was next. He presented an interesting over-view of safety in air traffic con-trol. He introduced some defi-nitions and benchmarks, which gave some background and set the scene for the discussions.
After learning some facts about the safety culture in the day-to-day operations and some concepts about safety management systems, the rest of the first day was reserved for a number of open panel discussions. Sub-jects included budgetary constraints in air traffic control; mandatory occurrence report-ing; and the role of fatigue management and Just Culture. Another very important and interesting item of the agenda was a pres-entation from the pilot’s perspective by two pilots from British Airways.
On the second day, José Calvo Fresno, Chief Regulation of SESAR JU, gave attendees an introduction to the SESAR project. Up next was Sander Roosendaal, Senior Tech-nical Manager ATM Programs of Honeywell Aerospace, who introduced SESAR’s Ameri-can counterpart, NextGen. As on day one, more time was then taken for panel discus-sions. Subjects for these discussions included regulations, technology and innovation in air traffic control, mainly looking at some of the upcoming changes. At the end of the day there was a short summary of the conference and a discussion about the identified strate-gies to maintain and improve safety in the day-to-day-business.
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^ by Erik Martinowski, Vice President Technical, Austrian Air Traffi c Controllers Association
DECEMBER 2013, LONDON, UK
4 The panel during one of the panel discussions. Photo: EM
4 Some of the attendees of the fi rst Safety in ATC Conference. Photo: EM
[email protected] Control Tower Con-cept, called “Smart Vision”. The concept is as simple as it is brilliant: it puts labels on everything you see on a tower, and has far more applications than just for Remote Towers. Our new IFATCA Corporate Member Coordinator, Thomas Fraenzl, was constantly busy explaining the tool to visitors. It was definitely one of the highlights of the exhibition!Another interesting booth was the Eurocontrol stand, which showed many projects and ini-tiatives it currently coordinates Europe. Its en-route centre, Maastricht UAC, showed how they implement and use the FMS parameters, downlinked via mode S, to their control-lers. This shows the selected altitude, heading, Mach num-ber, etc… Not only does this reduce frequency time, but as it is linked to the conflict alert, it helps to detect potential lev-el busts in real time: the con-troller are alerted to a discrep-ancy between the level they’ve inserted and the one selected on the flight deck! Eurocontrol also strongly pushed their am-bitions towards the so-called Centralized Services. You’re likely to hear much more about this in near future, as it will af-fect all of us in Europe. And there’s other interested parties looking to beat Eurocontrol to it…
Our Member Association from the USA, NATCA had also booked a booth: though it was one of the smallest stands, it was certainly one of the busi-est ones. And not just for the goodies they were handing out: it served as a meeting point for most of the control-lers visiting the show! ^
4 Trade Show Trade Show
WORLD ATM CONGRESS 2014
CANSO, the driving force behind the World ATM Congress, last year upped the compe-tition against the ATC Global Conference, traditionally held in February or March in the Netherlands. Venue this year was again Madrid (Spain) at the beginning of March. As a direct result, ATC Global recently an-nounced their move to China (Beijing, Sep-tember 2014). We now have one ATM trade event in Europe, which is what everyone re-ally wanted.
The exhibition The stand and exhibition area looked very similar to other venues over the past years. According to the organisers, the number of exhibitors increased from 150 last year to 190 for this edition. The majority of the par-ticipants seemed to hover around the same ‘traditional’ stands as before, a clear indica-tion that in ATM, there’s only a handful of manufacturers that really matter – the rest simply tag along…
The organizers, ATCA and CANSO, reported having over 6000 participants. The size of the exhibition hall and building itself howev-er gave the impression that attendance was quite low…
So what was new to see this year? As usual, THALES presented something from their very active research & development team: this time, it was the ATC console of the fu-ture, called SHAPE. It resembles a very large iPad with a touch screen that allows you to make intuitive inputs. Also being shown was what appeared to be a large conventional ATC display, but this one had an eye-track-er built in. Without additional head-gear, it detects which aircraft symbol/label you look at and highlights it – becoming slightly big-ger or brighter. You can then talk to it or make input for it. It looks very impressive in a demonstration, but a real-world applica-tion would probably need a lot of training to work well. For me personally, it didn’t like my glasses very much – so it seems to be aimed exclusively at young people with perfect eyesight…
Naturally, being one of the market leaders, Austrian company Frequentis was also ex-hibiting. They showed a tool for their Multi
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^ by Philippe Domogala, Deputy Editor
THE EXHIBITION – MADRID, SPAIN
4 The Eurocontrol stand at the exhibition.Photo: eurocontrol
4 Thomas Fraenzl explaining oneof Frequentis’ new systems. Photo: DP
4 Stand of Guntermann & Drunck (seethe advert on the backpage). Photo: G&D
Speaking on the European Single Sky, the CEO of the Association of European Airlines (AEA), Athar Husain Khan, said: “Politicians are not going to solve our problems. The way we do things in Europe is not the best way, as the wrong people are making the wrong decisions. We indeed may need to bring psychologists into the discussions, and involve more operational people from the airlines and air traffic management.”
In a different session, David McMillan, former DG of Eurocontrol is reported to have said that he believes that “In the future the [Air-line] industry will select which organizations are best suited to manage their traffic flows. Some airlines today are already seeing some ANSPs are being expensive intermediaries that they could do without.“ This implies that the danger of some of us disappearing is quite real.
The final remark from Paul Rinaldi was, in a nutshell: “Get us involved, tell us what you want, and we can try to find solutions for you to make it work!“ From the session, the audi-ence definitely got the message that a struc-tured partnership between management and controllers definitively has clear benefits for both parties. ANSPs that promote such an approach during the early stages of develop-ments will have better chances of still being around in the next decades. ^
4 Trade Show
WORLD ATM CONGRESS 2014
In line with their competitors of ATC Global, CANSO organises a 2-day conference alongside the trade show. As with compa-rable events, it’s quite expen-sive to attend. In further sticking with tradition, there are gener-ally some very familiar faces speaking about the some very familiar subjects. I managed to attend a session, in which there were a few ‘fresh’ faces (at least from my point of view), includ-ing Paul Rinaldi, the NATCA (USA Controllers Association and Union) President.
The session was on the part-nership between management and staff. What will it take to make those partnerships into a powerful tool that can resolve issues and deliver the transfor-mation needed in global ATM?
In his opening address, Paul Rinaldi made a very powerful observation: such a partner-ship is difficult. From a union’s perspective, it is much easier to fight that to enter into a partnership with your employ-er. While there are some fields where a common interest is
hard to find (efficiency and capacity vs. work-ing times for example), there are some areas where management and staff have common interests and can join forces. Safety is the probably the most obvious one, but techno-logical development is another example. At the same time, he warned that a project such as NextGen is not an end in itself that will solve everything in the future. “NextGen will never finish” he said, as they imply a continu-ous modernization of the system. And to be able to do this, you need a lot of work in col-laboration with the controllers.
Margaret Staib, Chief Executive Officer of Airservices Australia said that such partner-ship only works if you first define a common goal of what you want to achieve. This can sometimes be difficult, but we need to take the emotional part out of it. At the same time, it needs to be recognized that changes bring uncertainty into daily operations and a cer-tain reluctance is therefore understandable.
Paul-Frank Bijou, CEO of Airbus ProSky, ex-plained that the next 20 years will see the in-troduction of 27.000 new civil aircraft. “While this is good news for the manufacturers, it’s less appealing for passengers, airports and ATM”, he said. “We need partnerships to find ways to accommodate these aircraft. We need to include pilots, controllers and service providers into our future plans, to en-sure the system can cope.”
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^ by Philippe Domogala, Deputy Editor
THE DEBATES – MADRID, SPAIN
Photo: ©World ATM
Congress/Armando Solares
up. While the next generation of ACAS/TCAS can fly an RA automatically, it is not sufficient to meet the current Target Level of Safety (TLS) specified for normally piloted aircraft (incidentally now referred to as CCPAs, for Civilian Conven-tionally Piloted Aircraft!) The “See-and-avoid” back up is still missing. So unless technology is developed that addressed this gap somehow, the current Level of safety we enjoy in our civil controlled airspace can-not be guaranteed. The option of reducing the TLS to allow RPAs was not discussed, but I fear it might well come that, as there is an extreme amount of pressure to have RPAs flying in between normal aircraft right here and now. ^
Nik will try to attend either our annual IFATCA Conference in May or the regional meetings later during the year, in order to establish contacts in prepa-ration for their around the world challenge. ^
While this seems straightforward, it is quite far removed from what a number of manu-facturers and States have in mind. Autono-mous operations are already taking place in some parts of the world, or they are in very advanced stages of development. One can think of drones to deliver medicines to re-mote areas for example, or the flying deliv-ery robots that Amazon is looking into…
Matthew Baldwin said on behalf of the EU Commission DG Transport, that RPA regula-tion should not be “piling on more” rules on top of existing regulations. He thereby im-plied that no special rules will be applicable for RPAs. In the USA on the other hand, they would like to change the current RPA classifi-cation, which is based on weight. They argue they should be classified according to their performance. What everyone did agree on was that accommodating RPAs into civil air-space depends on a reliable collision avoid-ance technology, which does not yet exist.The current system, TCAS II falls short as it depends on having see-and-avoid as a back
As in previous missions, their meteorologi-cal team will determine the most optimum route, but in unpredictable situations, it could be that the aircraft actually flies back-wards! Definitely something to prepare for! The aircraft is not IFR certified, so it will fly as VFR in IFR airspace, but assuming the same cooperation as in previous missions, this should not pose huge problems.
A hot topic at the World ATM Congress 2014 was integration of remotely piloted aircraft into civil controlled airspace. ICAO insists that RPAs must comply with existing rules and do not require new classes of airspace. They must have an actual pilot in control who in charge of only one RPA at a time. They must also operate as IFR and be separated as such by complying with all ATC instructions. Autonomous operations are not foreseen, nor permitted under these ICAO provisions.
Andre Borschberg, pilot and CEO of the So-lar Impulse and Nik Gerber, one of their ATC Team attended the event in Madrid. I had a chance to spend time with them to ask them a few questions regarding their trip around the world, planned for March 2015.
They’re building a new airframe, slightly big-ger than the current model. The wingspan will match that of an Airbus 380. The flight characteristics, from a controller’s perspec-tive will not change much: climbing at 25 kts; cruise speed between 25 and 35 kts; and de-scending at 30 kts. The average rate of climb will be 70ft/min and maximum descent rate around 100ft/min. In daytime, it will climb to around FL280, descending to around 5000 ft at night. Some legs will be extremely long: the Pacific crossing will take 5 days and 5 nights! The single pilot will use special tech-niques to sleep and fly, but fatigue will prob-ably be an issue, especially towards the end of a leg. Controllers should be aware of that. The pilot will always be in contact with ATC via VHF or satellite. The ATC team in Swit-zerland will be in contact with the ATC units overflown via telephone.
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4 Trade Show
WORLD ATM CONGRESSRPAS: REMOTELY PILOTED AIRCRAFT
SOLAR IMPULSE UPDATE
4 DHL and other distributors are testing drones for package delivery. Photo: Frankhöffner | wikipedia
4 Andre Borschberg, Philippe Domogala and Nik Gerber.
ARCHIE THE AIRPLANE ARRIVES AT WHISTLEWIND AIRPORT
David RiderPaperback: 31 pagesPublisher: Austin Macauley Publishers LtdISBN-13: 978-1849634212
This was more like a story, since something actually happens, there is adventure, excite-ment, sadness, but all ends well in the end, just like a typical children's storybook. It re-minded me very much of 'Thomas the Tank engine', with characters such as 'Toby the tractor', 'Archie the airplane' and 'Harry and Henry from Happy Holidays'. The illustrations are also very basic, almost too basic really to match the long and detailed text on each page. As with the other story, reference is made again to the "man in an orange jacket waving 2 red bats" at the airport, to clarify that these are not controllers.
I also came across some American terms in this one, which I 'translated' on the fly. It was a bit peculiar that the controller was pic-tured as fat, but on the up side, there was a female pilot! My three-year-old son would have liked it better if the text/sentences had been shorter and perhaps less elaborate. In contrast, the pictures were far too basic for my older son of five, who dismissed the story straight away as a 'baby story'. This is a pity, since the text itself would probably have been suitable for his age.
4 Book Review
BOOK REVIEW
^ by Emma Thompson, Air Traffi c Controller at Maastricht UAC
Normally when The Controller is asked to review books, they’re about Human Factors, Safety or some new technological holy grail that will save lives, the uni-verse and everything. This time however, it’s even more impor-tant: children’s books! The Con-troller recruited Emma Thomp-son, originally from the UK but working in Maastricht UAC (the Netherlands), and her family – an also-a-controller husband, and three boys – to look at the aviation world in a child-friendly format.
MY DADDY IS AN AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER
Jim McMannamy (Author), Michael Schutz (Illustrator) Paperback: 30 pages Publisher: JPMISBN-13: 978-0989952705
The book isn’t so much of a story, but rather an explanation of what this "mysterious job" of an air traffic controller is. It describes No-lan who explains in school (at a show-and-tell) what his father’s job is all about. The best de-scription is "It's like TV, except he watches airplanes", which a child can relate to well. :-) My son of 5 years actually wasn't so interest-ed in it, and got bored half way through. Be-ing very factual, perhaps it is aimed at slightly older children who could read the book by themselves. But he did like the illustrations, which were nicely detailed, although I found the people a bit freaky looking.
Obviously written by an American author, the book uses American terms such as Mommy, TRACON, 'time for recess', thanksgiving etc, but these are easily adapted to an English audience. As it is often a misconception that controllers are the guys at the airport guiding the planes onto the stand, there was a page confirming that this is not true, "but they do have an important job to do", which was nice. Also a nice, was an accurate description of all Air Traffic Controllers: "It is one great big team to keep all of the airplanes and pas-sengers safe". As the title suggests, the book is directed at a somewhat limited audience. Overall, it gives the impression really of be-ing a book that children would be given when learning to read, rather than a story that would be read again and again at bedtime.
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4 “Daddy” Hugo reads tofi ve-year-old son, Caio, what an air traffi c controller does. Photo: ET
4 Emma and three-year-old Lucas enjoyingthe adventures of Archie the Airplane. Photo: ET
Charlie
After two days, they managed to dislodge the aircraft and turned it around. Nearly 1000 people turned up to see it taking off, empty back towards Ethiopia proving once more that anything is possible in Africa!
…………………………………………………
ATC miracleA tower trainee had one B737 just touch-ing down and another one on a 3 mile final, with a Dash8 commuter holding short for departure release: “I’m going to get that commuter out between those two jets,” declared the trainee. The OJT Instructor could see that there might just *be* enough time to make it work – but it would be tight! But like any good instruc-tor, he wanted to let the trainee make his own mistakes since that’s the only way for a guy to learn.Still, the Instructor couldn’t help but mumble in the trainee’s ear “if this works, it’ll be a miracle!”. The trainee intends to say “Commuter 123, taxi into position and hold, be ready for immedi-ate.” But what actually comes out (in one of the great Freudian slips of all times ) is: “Commuter 123, taxi into position and hold, be ready for a miracle.” There’s a big pause on frequency, and the then com-muter pilot says “Tower, I think under the circumstances we better just hold short.”
…………………………………………………
Overheard on the frequencyGlider pilot about to enter a class D airspace: Glider pilot: “Control this is Glider 123, approaching Alpha and request direct through your airspace.“Controller: “Glider 123, please orbit. Maintain height and position. Call you back!”Glider pilot: “Roger Sir, I can orbit, or maintain height or hold position. Please choose one!”
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Welcome on board Charlie’s own DC10!At Accra international airport, one of Gha-na Airways’ decommissioned DC10s was towed to a remote area near the airport. It was given a green livery, advertising a local beer (Club) and turned into a restaurant. The original seats are still there as are the toilets. Unfortunately, the cockpit had to be sacrificed to become the kitchen!
The DC10 can accommodate 118 guests and the food is not bad either. After a long flight, what’s the better way to relax: have dinner in another aircraft! Especially if it has “Welcome on board Charlie“ painted on its side. ^
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^ by Charlie
I can land anywhere!Arusha in Tanzania is a small airfield nor-mally used by single and twin engines pro-peller aircraft. It has a 1600 m long and 30 m wide runway with grass overruns. It’s an all-VFR airport, with a small tower and a single controller. Those having attended the 2008 IFATCA conference will know it well…
Well, back in December, the local control-ler got the shock of his life when he saw a Boeing 767 on final! The aircraft had been holding for the Kilimanjaro International Airport, some 50 km to the east, due to a small aircraft blocking the runway. When they eventually got cleared to land at Kili-manjaro, the crew appears to have picked out the Arusha runway. They just about managed to stop the beast just before running out of tarmac, but then got them-selves stuck trying to turn around. When it came to disembarking the passengers, they first parked a fire truck under the rear door of the plane and tried to put a ladder between the roof of the truck and the door of the plane. This was judged too risky and the truck went away, waiting for stairs to arrive via road from Kilimanjaro, some 50 km away. When these hadn’t arrived after about 3 hours (the truck broke down on the way), passengers forced the forward slide to deploy and disembarked. By the time the stairs arrived, another 2 hours later, only the crew were left in the aircraft.
CHARLIE’S COLUMN
4 Crowds turned out to watch the 767 at Arusha aiprort. Photo credit: INT
4 Charlie’s own DC-10 restaurant! Photo credit: DP
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