ifatca the controller - june 2010
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Also in this issue:4 IFATCA 2010
Conference 4 ATC Global
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L FEDERATION OF AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS’ ASSNS.
THE CONTROLLER
Journal of Air Traffic ControlJune 2010
4 FOCUS ON IRAN
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Contents
THE CONTROLLER
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this magazine are those of the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers’ Associations (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.
VISIT THE IFATCA WEB SITES: www.ifatca.org and www.the-controller.net
In this issue:Cover photo: Persepolis Griffin Photo credit: DP
June 20102nd quarter 2010 Volume 49 ISSN 0010-8073
PUBLISHERIFATCA, International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers’ Associations.
EXECUTIVE BOARD OF IFATCA
Alexis BrathwaitePresident and Chief Executive Officer
Patrik PetersDeputy President
Alex FiguereoExecutive Vice-President Americas
Hisham BazianExecutive Vice-President Africa and Middle East
Raymond TseExecutive Vice-President Asia and Pacific
Željko OreškiExecutive Vice-President Europe
Darrell MeachumExecutive Vice-President Finance
Scott ShalliesExecutive Vice-President Professional
Andrew BeadleExecutive Vice-President Technical
Jack van DelftSecretary/Conference Executive
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Philip MarienVan Dijcklaan 31B-3500 Hasselt, Belgiumemail: [email protected]
DEPUTy EDITORPhilippe Domogalaemail: [email protected]
CORPORATE AFFAIRSVacant
REGIONAL EDITORSAfrica-Middle East: Mick Atiemo (Ghana)Americas: Doug Church (USA)Phil Parker (Hong Kong)Europe: Patrik Peters & David Guerin
COPy EDITORSPaul Robinson, Helena Sjöström,Stephen Broadbent, Brent Cash, Andrew Robin-son and David Guerin
PRINTING-LAyOUTLITHO ART GmbH & Co. Druckvorlagen KGFriesenheimer Straße 6aD 68169 MANNHEIM, GermanyTel: +49 (0)621 3 22 59 10email: [email protected]
Also in this issue:4 IFATCA 2010
Conference 4 ATC Global
THE CONTROLLER
Journal of Air Traffi c ControlJune 2010
4 FOCUS ON IRAN
Obituaries ............................................................................................................ 4 Foreword by Alexis Brathwaite ............................................................................... 5
Editorial by Philip Marien ........................................................................................... 5Looking Back Between a rock and a hard place by Marc Baumgartner ....................... 6
Opinion What is an ATM concept by Jean-Marc Garot .................................................. 8Focus on Iran by Philippe Domogala
Joint Pilot/Controller Seminar in Iran ................................................................... 10 Interviews ..................................................................................................... 11 – 14
Trade Sanctions Impact on Safety ....................................................................... 152010 IFATCA Conference 49th Annual IFATCA Conference ........................................................................... 16 – 20Europe Two Days of Flight Safety by Johanna Karlzén & Patrik Peters ................................... 21 New IFATCA EVP Europe ............................................................................................. 22 New IFATCA Deputy President .................................................................................... 22 Dispute in Ireland by David Guerin ............................................................................... 23 Lufthansa Strike by Philippe Domogala ........................................................................ 24 Spanish Royal Decree .................................................................................................... 24Americas Air Traffic Control in Venezuela by Philipe Domogala ............................................... 25 Communicating for Safety Conference 2010 by Doug Church .................................... 26 Regional Aviation Safety Group-Pan America by Adolfo Zavala .................................. 27 Brazilian Chaos by Carlos Henrique Trifilio da Silva ..................................................... 28Africa & Middle East South Africa ........................................................................................ 28 RVSM in West Aerica by Mick Atiemo ................................................................. 29
Interview / New IFATCA EVP Africa and Middle East ......................................... 29Asia Pacific CAeM-XIV by Phil Parker .............................................................................. 30
ATC Global 2010 by Philippe Domogala 2010 ATC Global Exhibition ...................................................................... 31
Conference: All about Reducing Costs ..................................................... 32 CANSO OPS Conference Interview with Graham Lake ..................................... 33
Interview with Patrick KY & Greg Russel ................................................... 34Charlie’s Column ........................................................................................ 35
4 THE CONTROLLER
based in London Gatwick. Bob was a true total aviation person and you could call him any day, at work or in the pub. He would have the answer or a solution for you. He managed to divert a Boeing 727 into an IFATCA conference (Athens in 1985) and announce during the final party: we have an aircraft waiting at the airport! Anyone who wants to continue the party, come on board, we go to London, all’s for free! “ He designed DDD stickers – Don’t Delay Dan-Air! Everyone in ATC in Europe knew
him and his airline in those days. He knew all about flow control, helped create the CFMU in those famous ICAO meetings in Paris, where his hotel room was the central meeting point where compromises were made.
Bob passed away too soon: cancer pre-vented him from finishing his book, which we were all waiting to read. We wish all the strength to Jean and Nathalie, his wife and daughter. ^
Erik Sermijn
Bob Willis
º1943 – †2010IFATCA President 1986 – 1990
º1949 – †2010Former Dan-Air Operations Manager
Obituaries
Once upon a time there was an airline that was a true friend of ATC, an era long gone. This air-line had a fantastic Op-erations Manager, who spent a lot of time talk-ing (and drinking) with controllers, visiting their
ops rooms and towers, and providing them with free tickets on his airline. His name was Bob Willis and the airline was Dan Air,
1986) and President (1986-1990). He joined EUROCONTROL in 1995 and was acknowledged as a successful and very competent Head of ATM Procedures De-velopment in AFN and APN (what is today the Airspace Unit). Erik retired in 2004, but took on a EUROCONTROL project in 2007 that lasted for a few months.
Erik Sermijn had the unenviable task of following Harri Henschler as President. Through two terms as President, Erik nev-er failed to impress, exhibiting a seemingly photographic memory that stemmed no doubt from having attended most of the IFATCA conferences and regional meet-ings in the 1970s. He chaired the organis-ing committee for IFATCA ’79 in Brussels, was a member of SC4 (now PLC) and fol-lowed this with being elected to the Execu-tive Board as Vice President Professional.
As VP Professional, Erik did much liaison work on behalf of the Executive Board, which became a feature of his Presidency. In his first year as President he continued to carry the load of the vacant VP Profes-sional post. He was seen as supremely efficient and went about his task in a qui-etly unobtrusive manner; he never sought
Former IFATCA President Erik Sermijn passed away on Saturday, 16 January 2010 after a short illness at the age of 66. When Erik stepped down as President, he said: “I am saying my goodbyes, not because I am bored with the job as President, but satisfied that I was instrumental in the restructuring of our Federation”. Full of innovative ideas, Erik Sermijn was proba-bly more responsible than anyone else for the changes at the 1990 conference that provided the Federation with the manage-ment structure needed to efficiently meet the challenges that were looming in the 1990s. Erik is remembered by his colleagues as an excellent personality and a prominent expert in the area of ATM procedures de-velopment whose professional contribu-tion has been appreciated and recognised globally. He spent most of his career at BELGOCONTROL, first as an Air Traffic Controller and later in various manage-rial positions. He was also the President of the Belgian Guild of Air Traffic Controllers between 1974 and 1982, having served on the guild’s executive since 1969 and was, as well, editor of their magazine. He was IFATCA Vice-President Professional (1982-
confrontation, but faced it squarely – ap-proaching it confidently, always armed with facts. As with all IFATCA Presidents, Erik Sermijn possessed an abiding concern for the more under-privileged of his constitu-ency and he enjoyed considerable cred-ibility, particularly with his French speaking colleagues in Africa and Middle East.
Erik was a good leader who sought to ac-commodate the views of others, but was also a workaholic whose tempo could not always be matched by others. As with most successful IFATCA personalities, he had great support from a fantastic wife. Many see Godelieve Van Mieghem as a saint, without whom Erik would never have been able to work as he did for IFATCA. We shall not forget Erik’s ability to share his knowledge, his ever smiling face and his friendly character. ^
Foreword/Editorial
5 THE CONTROLLER
Although not my first editorial, it is the first one since being appointed as editor. I’m sure you’ll agree that Philippe Domogala set a formidable standard and example for me to follow. That is both a blessing and a curse at the same time, but I am fortunate enough to be able to count on him as Deputy Edi-tor. In this issue, we take a closer look at air traffic control in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a country that remains an enigma for a
Foreword from the Executive Board
Editorial
Looking to the Future
^ by Alexis Brathwaite, President and CEO IFATCA
lot of us. While they have specific problems, some are not that far removed from prob-lems elsewhere. Sadly, there appears to be an increasing number of Associations that experience difficulties with their employers. You’ll find updates to some of these in the regional sections. We also have extensive coverage of the 2010 IFATCA Conference, the ATC Global trade show in Amsterdam and some insights from CANSO.
We have rather full issue, so I’ll keep this short. Enjoy reading and until the next is-sue! ^
Philip MarienEditor
In 2007, IFATCA published a statement on the future of global air traffic management. This statement quotes John Schaar “The future is not some place we are going, but one we are creating.” And goes onto to state that the purpose of this document is to assist an understanding of where cur-rent Air Traffic Management (ATM) is, to provide a tool for gathering support of a particular approach and provide another step towards working together to create the future global Air Traffic Management that is needed.
In the coming months, IFATCA will try to further this understanding though various means and forums, such as ICAO Assem-bly 37 later this year and through the pub-lication of a vision document that builds upon our Future Statement. IFATCA will continue to work in all the regions to en-sure that the controllers’ view is taken into account at the conceptual stage of new initiatives. In fact, the nature of our organisation allows us to bring a global perspective to what may seem at first glance to be purely regional issues. So as SESAR enters the development phase; as NEXTGEN takes off; and as there are moves in Africa, Asia and South America to modernise and keep up with the rest of the world, IFATCA’s perspective is as rel-
evant as any other stakeholder in ensuring that these initiatives bring concrete and practical results. As important as these ini-tiatives are to their particular region, they can only provide their full benefits if they are implemented in a global context under the Global Air Navigation Plan of the Inter-national Civil Aviation Organisation whose objective is to create a seamless global air traffic management system.
To again quote our future statement: More than anything else, a comprehen-sive solution requires a high level of co-operation between all members of the ATM Community. The cooperation re-quired is a serious working together that requires pragmatism and compromise by all involved.
From IFATCA’s perspective a successful future for all of us in the aviation industry will be one in which we are all willing to participate with frankness and pragma-tism. This pragmatism must be reasonable and must not demand more of others than we are willing to offer ourselves. ^
Most often, stakeholders in the aviation industry operate as though we believe that our part of the aviation system is the most important; and that it should function in just the right manner that we have de-fined. Logic and practicality would suggest that we are not always seeing the whole picture; therefore, we need to continually challenge ourselves to work together to ensure the best outcome for all of us. “To protect and safeguard the interests of the Air Traffic Controller”, which is purely about ourselves, is not first on our list of objectives. This is one of the many rea-sons for IFATCA’s success. Back in 1961, our founders realised we would be most successful if we cooperated with other stakeholders for the benefit of civil avia-tion as a whole. As we look to the future, this objective remains. IFATCA is a non po-litical, professional federation. To promote and uphold a high standard of knowledge and professional efficiency among air traf-fic controllers is another important objec-tive. By doing this, we have proved to be credible and we have been able to work as partners with other professionals in the aviation industry to ensure that standards are maintained. And we are ready to work with everyone to develop the future air traffic management system.
even comfortable situation, means taking a certain risk. At that moment, he is caught between a rock and a hard place: there are two forces which limit his possibilities. In or-der to be able to continue his ascent how-ever, he has to make a choice to overcome this situation.
In the past decade, IFATCA has been more than once between a rock and hard place and when looking back at my 12 years of activity on the Executive Board (EB), I believe that the climber analogy describes the activities the EB had to face very well.
Air Traffic Control (ATC) has been in a transi-tion since the late 80s: from a government led and controlled activity, to a more commercial, businesslike way of providing the public service of vital economic interest to all nations around the world. After the liberalization of the airline industry, the ATC industry followed this trend, with a variety of institutional set ups and com-mercial models. This trend has brought along a lot of changes and challenges to the working environment and conditions for air traffic con-trollers. These also required better collaboration among all the stakeholders involved. During this transition phase, IFATCA has seen an in-
4 Looking Back
THE CONTROLLER6
Between a rock and a hard place
^ by Marc Baumgartner, Outgoing IFATCA President
The new editor challenged me to summarize 8 years of presi-dency in 1200 words. During my Presidency I’ve spent 730 days in meetings – not count-ing travel. I’ve also met with about 70 Ministers of Trans-port. I have accumulated some 15 Gigabytes of documents: the equivalent of approx. 200 days of non-stop presentations.Some of the most dramatic ex-
periences during my presidency were: the ac-cidents in Milan, Ueberlingen and the Gol in Brazil, followed by the accident in Congonhas airport and of course the murder of an air traf-fic controller working during the Ueberlingen mid-air collision.
Trying to summarize the past decade, I took the title from a presentation our Human Fac-tor Specialist, Mr. Bert Ruitenberg gave in 2002 during a forum organized in conjunc-tion with ATC Maastricht by our Member As-sociation EGATS. He explained the difficulty an air traffic controller faces daily trying to find a balance between safety and efficiency. He compared it to a mountaineer, who in the middle of a difficult climb, is caught in a dou-ble bind situation: to give up his safe, maybe
IFATCA had to struggle to get access to decision
making platforms.
Looking Back to 12 years on the IFATCA Board
4 A bridge changes the way people […] interact with each other Photo credit: Ramirez | Wikipedia
“fire” prevention plan (educa-tion, training and policies) in order to be more efficient in extinguishing the ’fires’ (na-tional disputes and/or accident) if they did break out.
I’ve used the image of bridges to describe best what I think IFATCA stands for. Bridges have to be founded on solid ground, stand on solid pillars and have to serve various purposes with the challenges of natural forces and strike a balance be-tween resistance and flexibility. A bridge changes the way peo-ple, societies and even conti-nents interact with each other. IFATCA is providing a unique “bridge” between member as-sociations on one end and their employers and all the other stakeholders in aviation on the other end. IFATCA has solid foundations and strong pillars, which have given a high visibil-ity to the profession of air traf-fic controllers on a global level. This has been achieved with the assistance of our member associations, our dedicated representatives and first and foremost with the tireless rock climbers on the EB. Being part of such a great group of dedi-cated professionals, who never feared any rock or any hard place in their climbing experi-ence, makes me proud. The way the EB has faced challeng-es made it a great honour to serve the federation as Presi-dent for the last 8 years.
And that brings me to my per-sonal highlights of my presi-dency: I met a lot of dedicated, welcoming and generous air traffic controllers. I was able to assist those who have been fired, put in front of a court or jailed to in various countries around the world. I discovered beautiful places with profession-al controllers. I was honoured to lead a fabulous organization with a unique network. ^
Our major contribution to the Global Concept of ATM, through the ca-pable and outstanding efforts of Andrew Beadle and the invaluable con-tribution in the Human Factors field by our out-going Human Factors Specialist Bert Ruitenberg have shown to the out-side world that IFATCA is definitely a player which has to be part of any decision making process when it comes to air traffic control/management.
During a memorable (power outage due to an autumn storm) meeting in 2000, in the English countryside, the board decided to come up with a strategy to shape our future activities. While tweaked over the past decade, it de-fined our guiding principles. Which involve-ments to prioritize on and at the same time being able to react to new initiatives, was the main challenge. As in the past, the EB will have to conduct its business within a very tight budget: Our yearly budget equals 10'000 minutes direct airline delay costs. That equal to a daily delay for the aviation community in Europe in summer or a day in low visibility procedures in KJFK! Participation of IFATCA representatives had to be tightly controlled in order to make optimal use of the limited re-sources. Due to all the dedicated representa-tives who were and still are working on a vol-untary basis, the Federation was and is able to make our voice heard and respected.
Over the past decade, we were faced several times with actions from governments that stretched the professional dimension of our federation to the utmost. The fight for basic recognition of the specificities of the profes-sion of air traffic controllers resulted in some highly publicized arm-twisting between air navigation service providers, governments and our federation. Around the globe, often in a very tense atmosphere where controllers were sacked or even put in jail, I had to try to struggle together with the member associa-tion for basic human rights. It is a continuous challenge for our federation to find a balance between defending controllers in a construc-tive, professional manner and a more radical union approach. Sometimes the expectations of our member associations could not always be fully realized as a balance needed to be found between defending the interest of the Member Associations and the Federations overall goals. The EB tried to set up a proper
4 Looking Back
THE CONTROLLER 7
crease in membership as well as an increased demand to be part of the collaborative ap-proach to the future of aviation industry. Prior to the mid 1990’s, IFATCA had to struggle to get access to decision making platforms. By the end of that decade however, IFATCA found itself increasingly solicited to be part of them from the outset. This required the EB to adapt its working structure and increase the visibility of IFATCA as the global voice of air traffic controllers in various intergovernmental organizations. Finding sufficient volunteers, who were willing to work in their spare time as representatives for IFATCA, was a big chal-lenge. To name just a few: the 11th Air Naviga-tion Conference, the permanent observer status at the Eurocontrol Provisional Council, the in-
volvement in creating Single European Sky and lately the involvement in SESAR and (at least in the beginning) of NEXTGEN. While this participation has not necessarily lead to a change of mind, it was and is important to raise the voice of air traffic controllers. I’ve al-ways been amazed and sometimes even frus-trated to see how many people and organiza-tions, often without any air traffic control background, attempt to influence the present and future work of our profession.
By granting IFATCA observer status to the Air Navigation Commission, ICAO opened to IFATCA completely new avenues for provid-ing our professional and technical expertise.
Highly publicized arm-twisting between air
navigation service pro-viders, governments and our federation.
4 More relaxed times for the former President? Photo credit: Luis Fuentes
4 Marc receives the IFATCA Scroll of Honour Photo credit: Luis Fuentes
4 Opinion
What is an ATM concept?^ by Jean-Marc Garot, Former Director
of the Eurocontrol Experimental Centre
• They should not have read any of the docu-ments of previous “concepts”;
• They should not rely on any research, stud-ies or experiments;
• From the ATC side, they are either former ATCOs or people who never qualified as one but have some OPS room experience. In that respect, there are no worse anti-clerics than defrocked monks;
• The airline experts are, in general, even worse because ATC is not their core business and they consider their desires as realistic;
• Experts from the aircraft equipment manu-facturers impose their “air” vision without trying to understand the “ground”;
• Experts from the ground equipment manu-facturers are only after means to finance a business which is not “profitable” since it is not a mass market;
• The experts of the Air Navigation Serv-ice Providers prefer dreaming about their ideal world, which includes finally getting rid of ATCOs, rather than the way it is or it could be.
To better understand what an ATC concept is, let’s look at what is a concept car: it’s a mock-up or even only a draw-ing of an automobile that is created as an exercise; to dem-
onstrate the technical skills and imagination of the designers. It is not intended for mass production or sale, but rather as a theoreti-cal demonstration of things that are possible, but not necessarily realistic.
In ATM, a concept consists of first in bring-ing together “experts” during some time to write a document. This document which will then be “ratified” at “political” level and, ul-timately, it will be “validated”.
The Expert StageThis can be done in a country, at a regional level such as Europe (under the aegis of Eu-rocontrol, the European Union or the ECAC) or at an international level, at ICAO for ex-ample. But who are these experts? In gen-eral, they are selected by the different stake-holders according to following criteria:
8
4 You have euuh some sort of concept on your right wing. Photo credit: ACARE
4 JM Garot Photo credit: Eurocontrol
THE CONTROLLER
4 Opinion
operational environments. Which took advantage of hu-man-centred systems which is the essence of ATC and which relied on common sense, rath-er than on ESARR 6 or some other sophisticated regulation.
In the 60s and 70s, very success-ful flight data processing, radar data processing, short-term conflict alert systems were suc-cessfully implemented. What has happened since? • TCAS as result of a US politi-
cal decision • ATFM after the 1981 strike in
the US• Arrival managers
With the above in mind, isn’t it high time to challenge the whole ATC system engineering process?
My suggestion would be to start with the red-tape process of “concept”. ^
Jean-Marc.Garot@ developpement-durable.
gouv.fr
recently, sometimes a little bit of security – of the overall system in a completely artifi-cial environment. This is especially so for the ATCOs, who through the delight of the so-called ergonomists supposed-to-be human factors specialists, need to be convinced that some of the hypotheses can become certain-ties of the “concept”.
When these “advanced innovative features” are introduced in the field, they often don’t deliver the expected benefits. Conveniently, this failure will be attributed to the “conserv-atism” of the ATCOs. Without the predicted benefits, after 5 years to 10 years, the ATM microcosm is ripe to start all over again, de-veloping a “new” concept.
Plan vs ConceptHas anything changed since I left behind my (long) “shelf of concepts” in my office in Brétigny after April 2005?
NEXTGEN and SESAR are not “concepts” as described above – they are plans... In the field of air traffic control, a plan (or one of its many synonyms: brown book, European ATM Convergence And Implementation Plan, European ATM Plan or Master Plan) consists of describing that a stage 2 will take place after a stage 1. Stage 3 happens after a stage 2. It doesn’t require any validation of neither the feasibility nor of the likelihood of dates. Furthermore, no post implementation checks are foreseen.
The only aim of a “road map” is to justify significant amounts of money to be paid up front (by whom?). Investing money here and now, it promises to save money somehow at a given “stage” of this road map reduc-ing delays or emissions... It may take time to grasp the concept, but once you understand, you may rightly wonder whether this is not some sort of monkey business.
There used to be a time without concepts or road maps. A time where engineers were testing new functions with actual data and in shadow mode. Where a trustworthy rela-tionship existed with open-minded ATCOs ready to embark on tests and trials in real
The result is a “consensus” in the form of a document, generally as thick as possible, thanks to the word-processor function called “copy and paste”, with the same hypotheses as all the previous “concepts”.
The hypotheses of this conceptual phoenix, rising from the ashes of the previous one, are the following:• Centralised around a system• Using a link of data between the air and
the ground• Computing accurate trajectories in “4 di-
mensions” (x, y, z and time), despite the fact that not 2 Flight Management Systems calculate them in the same way – not even for something as trivial as wind...
• Suggest building a synchronized and shared database (System Wide Information Management) from which
• It adapts demand to capacity (capacity which becomes infinite thanks to the com-puter capabilities)
• It detects and solves conflicts except ones that are too complex: it leaves those for the ATCO / Manager to solve.
• It organizes the arrivals of airplanes by set-ting very precise arrival times
These hypotheses are at best ambiguous definitions, which everybody can agree to. These magically become certainties, be-ing the result of an “experts consensus”. As such, these are not questioned and they promise certainties, in terms of security, ef-fectiveness, cost and the more recently fash-ionable, environment.
RatificationThis document is then “ratified” at the po-litical level by persons who have neither the inclination nor the time to read it. Instead, they will dwell on the more media-grabbing aspects, even if it consists of taking bladders for lanterns…
ValidationThen comes the time of a process called “validation” which expresses this step per-fectly. It is neither in a research process nor experimentation, which could call into ques-tion our hypotheses. Instead, it appears that we are so very sure of ourselves!
The validation consists of trying to simulate reality. Such a simulation will try to “navi-gate” planes with more or less sophisticated models of trajectories. Of course, in reality, the predictions of trajectories as are used in the simulation are of course by no means perfect anymore! These simulations try to measure the behaviour – or rather the ex-pected benefits towards capacity and, more
9
4 It’s unlikely you’ll ever drive a concept car. Photo credit: Julien Tromeur | Dreamstime.com
Without the predicted benefits, after 5 years to 10 years, the ATM mi-crocosm is ripe to start all over again, develop-ing a “new” concept.
THE CONTROLLER
4 Focus on Iran
Joint Pilot/Controller Seminar in Iran^ by Philippe Domogala,
Outgoing Editor
(cockpits and ATC Ops rooms ) of the other.As Captain Ghasemi, Deputy Manager of Iran Air said: “In order to fly an aeroplane, you need 2 wings: for me, one is the pilot and the other the controller. It is essential that both work in harmony to get the best flight possible, safe and efficient.”
Captain PAZOKI, Iran Air General Director of Flight Operations and Training was also present during the 2 days and supported the needs for more CRM and for improving safety in his interventions. There are many hurdles for Iran to maintain a high level of safety, but the will to overcome them is there everyday.
To fly you need knowledge and experience. Sharing knowledge and experience is neces-sary to have a safe flight. This seminar pro-vided the means to share that knowledge and experinence. In view of the success of this seminar, I am sure there will be some more organised in the future on a regular ba-sis. Well done Iran ATCA! ^
For the first time, Iran ATCA and Iran Air organised a semi-nar on Cockpit Resource Man-agement (CRM) last January in the Iran Air Training Centre in Teheran. Ali Haghighi of Iran ATCA was the organiser and invited IFATCA and IFALPA to be the 2 foreign guests. I repre-sented IFATCA, giving a series of presentations on TCAS issues and the lessons to be learned from the Brazilian collison, with emphasis on communications. IFALPA was represented by Capt Mohamad Hassoun, the Regional Vice President Middle
East. Capt hassoun is a senior Captain flying various Airbus types with Lebanon’s Middle East Airlines (MEA).
Due to the very high demand – over 300 participants, spread over roughly 60% con-trollers and 40% pilots – the Seminar was re-peated over 2 days. Feedback was excellent. The message delivered by both of us was very similar, which impressed the audience. IFATCA and IFALPA have the same voice in many aspects. When there was a difference, for instance on the need to downlink RAs in-formation to the controllers, we were able to provide a clear explanation from both sides without a need to start arguing.
Top executives from Iran Air and the Iranian Airport Authority were present. They deliv-ered their own speeches/presentations and Capt Emadi highlighted the need to improve English and CRM to enhance safety. Most pilots and controllers in Iran are already lan-guage tested to level 4 or higher.
The seminar also offered the unique oppor-tunity for local pilots and controllers to meet one another and discuss and eliminate some misunderstandings. Many local recommen-dations were made after this seminar. The most promising is the institutionalisation of visits from one group to the working place
4 Capt. Hassoun during his speech
4 Capt Emadi and Ali Haghighi discussing
4 Participants final photo All photo credits: DP
Phot
o cr
edit:
Iran
-ATC
A
10 THE CONTROLLER
4 Focus on Iran
Ebrahim MoradiPresident Iran ATCA
Ali HaghighiSeminar Organiser
^
^
by Philippe Domogala, Outgoing Editor
by Philippe Domogala, Deputy Editor
controller. We also have finan-cial problems: collecting asso-ciation fees in this situation is not easy. As our association is not rich, we hope IFATCA will not charge us too much in the coming years! In spite of our financial problems, Iranian AT-COs provide good service with a high level of safety. We hope to have more efficient direct routes in our airspace in order to meet the ICAO and IATA re-quirements. This will make the use of Tehran FIR one of the best choices. ^
we have received lots of posi-tive comments from all that attended. That encourages us to continue in this way. We are for example planning a CISM seminar in April or June. Fur-thermore, as soon as it is pos-sible for us to attend, we are looking very much forward to participate in the IFATCA Asia Pacific Regional Meetings. ^
a minority and it is difficult for us to claim our differences, but we do try!
Q: I didn’t see many female controllers. What is the percentage of women working in ATC in Iran?A: Of the 1000 or so controllers today, only 10 are women (1%). Until a few years ago, re-cruitment was an issue but this has now been addressed.
Q: How is the work of the association viewed by the controllers? A: Very well and we try to be increasingly visible and useful. For instance, we issue a monthly bulletin. Mainly in Farsi, but one page in this bulletin is in English: we call it “Expedite Climb to Level 4” to help those controllers who are not yet level 4 – about 40% still to pass the test. But there is no strong motivation for individuals to work for the association. Unpaid volunteer work is not popular when you are a badly paid
and Western weekend days are different complicates things – Thursdays and Fridays in Iran compared to Saturday & Sundays in the West. The originally agreed dates for this seminar had to be changed, due to circum-stances beyond our control, creating even more unforeseen problems. Q: Are you pleased with the results and are you planning to organise more such semi-nars in the future? A: As there are always areas to improve, one cannot be completely satisfied as an organiser, but overall, it was very good and
Q: What are the main controllers problems in Iran? A: The main problem is staff shortage, fol-lowed by remuneration: our salaries are very low, especially compared to neighbouring countries such as the Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. In Iran, being an air traf-fic controller is considered a normal, govern-ment job. Every employee of the government is paid the same. Our salary is at the same level as secretaries for instance. A control-ler will start his career with the equivalent of about 600 USD a month. This rises to about 1000 USD after 5 years (being full rated) and the maximum is around 1200 USD towards the end of your career. To compare, a First Officer of a Fokker 100 receives about 2000 USD.
Q: Is your association fighting this?A: In the Iranian Airport Company (IAC), there are 6000 employees. Only 1000 of them are controllers. This means that we are
Q: Was the seminar difficult to organise?A: I would have to say yes. Organizing a sem-inar for us, as non-government organisation, was very difficult. The official working proc-esses in Iran are usually time-consuming and sometimes the regulations and procedures are not so clear. Requirements can change at short notice (e.g. applying for a visa for our foreign guests) and therefore, it was impos-sible to have a long-term or even mid-term plan. It often required us to solve problems at the last minute. Perhaps surprisingly, an-other problem here is that there are lots of public holidays. Even the fact that Iranian
11 THE CONTROLLER
Iranian ATCOs provide good service with a high level of safety.
Another problem here is that there are lots of
public holidays.
THE CONTROLLER12
Our main problem however is the lack of
parking space.
4 Focus on Iran
Teheran Meharabad AirportAlizera Mahkam, Deputy Director and Former President Iran ATCA
^ by Philippe Domogala, Outgoing Editor
To make ends meet, each controller works beteen 70 to 155h overtime per month. Due to this lack of staff, there are not enough controllers to operate the radar service in the TMA. We’re unable to open all sectors and of the 30 days annual leave per year, we of-ten can only take 15 at most. The rest is lost and not paid. We normally work 12h shifts, followed by 48h rest. As overtime is not paid and there are no allowances for giving train-ing for instance, it is extremely difficult to movitvate people. Younger controllers find it difficult to stay in this profession. Some are trying to get away, aggravating the staff shortage. ^
C130s and Il-76 transports. It is busy here: on avergage about 500 movements per day up, but peak days see up to 1300. Between 6 and 8 every morning we have about 60 air-craft wanting to take off. Our main problem however is the lack of parking space. Our main taxi-way is often used as parking, with a perticularity: this taxi-way is only 102m from the center line of runway 29R!
Q: What are the main problems you have?A: Currently, there are 105 controllers. In or-der to operate all sectors safety while giving everyone all the free time and holidays they are entitled to, we would need another 100!
Q: What are the perticulari-ties of this Airport? A: Meharabad is the old Te-hran main airport. Today it serves mainly domestic flights. It’s located in the middle of the city. It is a joint civil military airport with joint opereations: the military here used mostly
2500 years ago, the central Europeans were living as tribes in wooden huts and were not dreaming about flying. But 50 km north of Shiraz in Iran, lay the remains of the Persian culture, where their unique God at the time (Ahuramazda) was symbolised as overflying humanity on a large bird. This was 500 BC in Persepolis, under the kings Darius and Xerses, rulers of the Persian Empire.
Flying was a dream then and beautifully sculpted stone griffins and winged bulls decorated massive temples. Today Iran Air uses the Persepolis griffin of King Darius as its logo and symbol. ^
Iranian Civilisation
4 Iranair type griffins Photo credit: DP
4 Wing Bulls Photo credit: Ali Haghighi
4 God Ahuramazda Photo credit: DP
THE CONTROLLER 13
4 Focus on Iran
Iranian Civilisation
Isfahan AirportMr. Alizera Askari, Deputy Head Operations
Tehran ACC Mr. Ebrahim Shoushtari, Director General of ATS and Ali Reza Majzoubi, Chief ACC
Q: What are in your opinion the major problems for your airport?A: Our main problem is low salaries and lack of qualified radar controllers to offer full 24h radar ATC service. ^
Q: Can you descibe your operations at Isfahan airport? A: We have 54 controllers in Isfahan. Only 22 are radar rated to man the approach. Just like most airports in Iran, which are in fact mili-tary airbases, this is a joint civil-military air-port. But ATC is only civil. We have between 100 and 200 commercial movements per day plus hundreds of military movements, mainly F5s and F14s. Isfahan is is one of the Iranian Air force training bases.
again because of the trade sanc-tions we cannot get it.
E. Soushtari: The lack of spare parts is slowly affecting safety but there is little we can do. In the last 6 years traffic increased by 75% in Iran. Some 50% of our traffic is overfly-ing traffic, so we urgently need to new equipment to meet the chal-lenges of that expansion... ^
Q: What are the specifics of Tehran ACC?E. Soushtari: There are 200 controllers to-day in our ACC, which covers the whole of the Iranian airspace. We have plans to open new sectors but due to the lack of staff we cannot do so.A. Majzoubi: Our airspace is large. Some routes in our FIR are over 2000 km long. We should have full radar coverage, but we’ve lost recently a large part of our radrar cover-age in the South East due to a violent storm. One of our radar antennas in Jiroft (near Bam) was blown away. We ordered a new one from Thales (France) but due to the econom-ic sanctions, it cannot be delivered: custom services in Paris seem to have blocked the export. We also bought and paid for an APP radar for our airport TMA in Bandar Abas but
Shiraz AirportMr. Kourosh Fattahi, Deputy Ops Manager
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4 Ali Reza Majzoubi, Chief Tehran ACC
4 Ebrahim Shoushtari, Dir. General of ATS
4 Tehran ACC
Q: What are specificities of Shiraz?A: We have 50 controllers in Shiraz, which is about 20 people short of the 70 we would need to operate fully. We have 24.000 civil and another 20.000 military movements per year. Shiraz is linked to 24 destinations domestically and 10 internationally: direct flights to Malaysia, Thailand, Turkey, Austria and Germany are planned for next year.
Q: and your main problem? A: Our main problem is the lack of proper Safety management System (SMS). We are trying to introduce such a system but it is not yet systematic. We are also trying to introduce a just culture but it is a slow process. ^
Iran Air Capt. Hassan Ghasemi, Deputy Managing Director Operations
Iran Air Language ProficiencyCapt. Majid Emadi, Trainer
Airlines in Iran
ERs, but have difficulties getting them due to the trade sanctions. The sanctions are a big problem for us, also to obtain spare parts for our aircraft. We often have to rely on the black market at inflated prices. So our main-tenace budget is very important and makes our flying costs quite expensive.
We also want to make Mashad airport our second hub, and operate many direct flights from there in the future. ^
Q: What about language training and proficiency?A: We are introducing Language Proficiency training widely in our company. Currently, we now have English only on the R/T and are introducing English only in intra-cockpit communications as well. ^
result, our operations are ineffecient. Direct routes for example are not possible.
We would like to introduce RNP arrival and departure rutes for both Meharabad and Ika airports in Tehran. That would help us.
Q: What are your plans for the future? A: Our plans are first to modernise our fleet. We are ready to buy 50 new aircraft, mainly long range types like A330-300 and B767-
counter frequently technical problems. In order to compensate for those, we train our pilots and engineers far deeper than a typical western airline will do. It took me 7 years for instance from recruitment to first oficer. I was trained as a pilot (ATPL) and as a flight engi-neer. When one of our pilots gets to fly in a new modern airliner, the reaction is always the same: “Nothing to do! We are bored! Everything works perfectly here!”
Asseman (IRC): 30 aircraft with 15 F-100, 4 B-727 and 10 ATRs
And 10 other smaler airlines using MD-80s, F-100 and Tu-154s. Some 15 TU-154 still op-erate in Iran, mostly leased from Russia and Ukraine. ^
Q: Do you have any problems with ATC in Iran? A: Certainly not with the con-trollers. In my opinion, the work of air traffic controllers in Iran is under-estimated. Our problems are rather with the ATC system. There are hun-dreds of prohibited, restricted and dangerous areas, far more than in any other country. As as
Q: How is training organized in Iran Air?A: Training is done internally. We have a B707 and 727 simu-lator in Iran. For all the other types we go abroad (Paris, Tokyo, Amsterdam or Frank-furt). Unfortunately our fleet is made of old ageing aircraft and as a consequence, we en-
Iran Air (IRA): 65 aircraft all western types incl 8 B-747s, 12 A-300, 4 A-320 and 16 F-100.
Mahan Air (IRM): 25 aircraft, all western types incl 5 B-747 and 14 A-300.
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4 Focus on Iran
14
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4 Focus on Iran
15
4 Iran Air Fokker 100 Photo credit: DP
Trade SanctionsImpact on Safety^ by Philippe Domogala,
Outgoing Editor
Currently the sanctions include an embargo on dealings with Iran by U.S. citizens, and a ban on selling aircraft and re-pair parts to Iranian aviation companies.
Source: Global Policy forum and
Wikipedia.
Capt Hassoun said: “This goes against the ICAO seamless global plan. There is foreign civil commercial airlines traffic with western passengers who are using those routes, and depriving the civil ACC from spare parts is a direct safety is-sue. In case of emergency, de-scending in that area without guidance could be extremely dangerous as well”.
The mountains below are in excess of 4000 meters and for instance, the minimum safe al-titude (MSA) in some parts of those routes, now currently lack-ing radar coverage, is FL170. ^ [email protected]
to build nuclear weapons. The USA asked the United Nations to investigate. The IAEA was unable to provide a conclusive answer on whether Iran was pursuing nuclear weap-ons activities and refered the case to the Security Council. The UN Security Council in March 2006 asked that Iran should suspend all enrichment activities by 31 Aug 2006. As Iran refused, the UN Council imposed sanc-tions on Iran. In March 2007 the UN Security Council passed resolution 1747 instensifying the previous sanctions package.
those routes every night. Those routes are in Iran for about 2000 Km (over 2h flights) and are RVSM. They used to be, like the rest of the Tehran FIR, totally under radar control. 2 years ago, a violent storm destroyed the (civil) radar antenna of JIROFT (near Bam in South of Iran), which removed radar cov-erage on the south East of Iran FIR exactly where those 2 routes are passing. Iran CAA ordered a replacement antenna with Thales in France, but Thales could not ship them the replacement due to the sanctions.
The lack of radar coverage is about 600 NM of those routes, and covers the Afghan and Pakistani FIR borders. Below those routes is high terrain and mountains. Depriving radar coverage along civil commercial routes is not a political issue but a safety issue. IFATCA (and IFALPA) are strictly non-political, but as
HISTORY: Following the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the United States imposed broad economic sanctions against Iran. They accuse the Irani-an governement of sponsoring and funding terrosrism abroad.
The sanctions prevent US firms from doing business with Iran. In 2003, Iran revealed its uranium enrichment program for civil use and invited the UN nuclear monitoring body (the IAEA) to visit. There was wordwide concern that that the enriched uranium could be used
The UN and US trade sanctions are restrict-ing the import of so called “strategic” goods, and unfortunately, civil aviation and civil air-craft fall under that list. As a result they have to improvise to get repairs done, as they cannot get spare parts, let alone new equip-ment: (e.g. Iran ATS ordered a new radar from Thales for the Bandar Abbas airport (a large airport opposite to the Emirates on the Persian Gulf) and paid for it 2 years ago, but it cannot be delivered) Their ATC systems is modern using Thales Eurocat 2000 in Tehe-ran ACC, and all major airports have radar APP radar control.
Safety IssuesOne thing that is worrying is that the main overfly routes from USA and EUROPE to South East Asia are along 2 tracks: UL 124 and UL125. About 450 western airliners use
4 Spare parts for aircraft and ATC equipment are hard to obtain. Photo credit: © Emprise | Dreamstime.com
presented citations of merit to some of their fellow associations.
ProceedingsIn different committee sessions, delegates concentrated on addressing technical, pro-fessional and procedural issues. Several as-sociations reported problematic situations: amongst the more notable one were Haiti, Russia, Brazil and South Africa.
Overall, the conference was very success-ful. Not only was it well organised, but the hotel provided the perfect setting for both the formal as the informal meetings between colleagues from across the world. A sign at the hotel entrance said “Welcome to Para-dise” and inside was indeed a small paradise. Sadly, it presented a sharp contrast with the economic reality of many countries in the re-gion and indeed the rest of the world.
The 2011 Conference will take place in Am-man, Jordan. It’ll be the 50th anniversary of the Federation. In 2012, Kathmandu in Nepal will host the IFATCA conference. ^
4 2010 IFATCA Conference
THE CONTROLLER16
49th Annual IFATCA Conference
^ by Philippe Domogala & Philip Marien, Editorial Team
The annual IFATCA Confer-ence was held in the Domini-can Republic between 12th and 16th of April 2010. Member As-sociations from over 60 coun-tries attended with around 400 delegates. The setting for the meeting was a lush, tropical re-sort in Punta Cana on the east side of the Hispaniola island.
OrganisationThe event was organised by the controllers’ association of the Dominican Republic, ADCA. They are a relatively small as-sociation, but under the or-ganising committee under the chairmanship of El-Kadur Acosta – a regular contributor to this magazine – they did an excellent job which resulted in a fine conference.
Opening PlenaryTraditionally, the annual con-ference is opened in a formal
plenary session. In attendance of the Secre-tary of State and Director of Air Navigation Services Lic. José Tomás Pérez, outgoing IFATCA President Marc Baumgartner pre-sided the opening meeting. He highlighted the importance of cooperation. In the past year, IFATCA has been able to secure a place on the permanent commission of ICAO. It is a very important step to get the voice of air traffic controllers to be heard at the highest level. He also stated that due to the financial crisis, airlines and ANSP are looking for new business models. A lot of ANSP’s are trying to change working conditions for the worse – while the real problems are not addressed. Improved and modern communication is needed to promote a positive profile of the controller towards the media and public. He furthermore highlighted that the staff short-age remains an issue across the world.
As Haiti shares the island with the Dominican Republic, the earthquake that hit Port-au-Prince early 2010 received special attention during the opening plenary: the Haitian con-trollers thanked all MA’s and the federation for their support. The Haitian controllers also
April 2010, Punta Cana, Dominican Republic
Interview Félix A. Rosa Martínez, President Dominican Republic association ADCA
retirement policy. In fact we do not have a proper retirement scheme, as nobody can af-ford to retire under the present conditions. Here you stay at work until you die! The cur-rent situation is leaving you with less than 40% of your present salary, so controllers continue well pass retirement age in differ-ent positions. Our association is addressing this problem. Our next difficulty is the staff shortage and we are busy with this as well. This conference gave us the opportunity to talk to our top management and politicians present about those issues during the open-ing ceremony. ^
participated or sponsored this event. That means they are now aware about our pro-fession. We were not that known before and now people regard us differently. Also the publicity around this conference hopefully will attract more volunteers to work for our Association and for IFATCA.
Ph: What are the current problems for the controllers here and do you think this conference will help you addressing those problems?Félix: Yes, I think this conference will help. Our biggest challenge at the moment is our
Philippe: What has this con-ference brought you?Félix: For us this conference is a big success. The organizing committee did an excellent job considering we are all vol-unteers and everyone worked very hard, often non-stop from 7 in the morning to midnight.
Also the relations with our employer have improved a lot. Nearly all Dominican avia-tion related companied either
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4 2010 IFATCA Conference
THE CONTROLLER 17
Scroll of Honour
New Executive Vice President Finance
Interview Félix A. Rosa Martínez, President Dominican Republic association ADCA
Conference Debates – Administrative Issues
ing concern of an emerging media waged war deliberately orchestrated against ATC guilds, associations and unions. Directors unanimously condemned the emerging threat and urged the Executive Board to monitor the trend and take appropriate action.
The Jordan Air Traffic Controllers’ Association was confirmed as host for the 50th Annual Con-ference, to be held in Amman on 11-15th April 2011. Nepal has been elected to host IFATCA 2012 in Kathmandu tentatively on 12-16 the March 2012. An expression of interest for the 2013 conference was received from Indonesia.
Committee A commended efforts being made by the EB to ensure a memorable 50th anniversary celebration. Directors therefore endorsed the Executive Board’s plan to spend a maximum of US $ 40,000 from the General Reserves Fund for activities related to the celebration. ^
The Controllers Associations of Columbia and Papua new Guinea became the newest members of the Federation. IFATCA elected a few new members in their Executive Board: First Darell Meachum of the United States was elected EVP Finance, replacing Dale Wright; Hisham Bazyan of Jordan was elected EVP Afri-ca- Middle East, replacing the late Henry Nkon-dokaya. Željko Oreški of Croatia was elected EVP Europe replacing Patrik Peters who him-self was elected to become Deputy President. And finally IFATCA now has a new President: Alexis Brathwaite of Trinidad and Tobago was elected to replace Marc Baumgartner, who is leaving the board after 12 years of dedicated service to IFATCA.
Andrew Beadle, EVP Technical, Scott Shal-lies, EVP Professional and Alex Figuereo, EVP Americas were reelected for a further 2 years.There were several reports this year of prob-lems in all IFATCA regions. There is a grow-
the controllers as well as to the outside avia-tion world. He is also a born organizer and he readily volunteered to take on more tasks and to help others that requested it. Marc truly deserves the recognition and respect of all controllers worldwide. ^
possible on matters of mutual interest, es-pecially before the Executive Board reaches its decision. I believe every board member should assist the federation’s goals and ob-jectives on every front; not just an individual board member’s area of jurisdiction. Con-sequently, I will promote tactical and stra-tegic planning on matters of import to all associations, with a particular focus on issues affecting our less economically fortunate as-sociations. ^
During the final Plenary of the Conference in Punta Cana, Marc Baumgartner received the scroll of honor amid 400 delegates, who gave him an emotional standing ovation. Marc has served as EVP Europe from 1998 to 2002 and then President for the last 8 years. Under his able leadership, IFATCA increased its stature and was finally formally acknowledged by many international organizations, including ICAO. Besides his immense technical knowl-edge, Marc is also a good speaker and is able to captivate an audience. This enabled him to bring difficult messages to our membership,
Darrell MEATCHUM from the USA, is 52 years old and an ARTCC controller in Fort Worth, Texas.
Philippe: What are your plans in joining the IFATCA Board?Darrell: I hope to build upon the successes of former EVP-F, Jimmy Dale Wright, wherein the Federation established sound book-keeping programs and strong financial re-serves. I will seek as much transparency as
4 Newly elected PCX Alexis Brathwaite & outgoing PCX Marc Baumgartner Photo credit: Luis Fuentes
4 Marc receives a standing ovation during final plenary Photo credit: Luis Fuentes
4 Darrell Meachum, new EVP-F Photo credit: Luis Fuentes
4 EVP Professional Scott & EVP Technical Andrew Beadle Photo credit: Luis Fuentes
Professional CommitteeOver the week, the delegates in Commit-tee C amended or accepted new policy on items as diverse as the Human Factors Case, the Ageing Controller, Privatization, and the Information Handbook. Information papers, that generated a considerable amount of interest and discussion, were presented on topics including the Detection of Impaired Personal Performance, Chemical Depend-ency Programmes, Industrial Relations, and Critical Incident Stress Management. The committee was also informed of the Execu-tive Board’s initiative to create the IFATCA Safety Council, in which the duties formerly carried out by the Human Factors Specialist would be integrated with other safety re-lated tasks. Updates were presented to the delegates on the Implementation of ICAO’s English Language Proficiency Requirements, and ATCO Staffing Shortages. Both items have been monitored by IFATCA for several years now, and it is disturbing to notice that very little progress seems to be made in ei-ther areas.
The 2011 (extended) ICAO deadline for the Language Proficiency Implementation is ap-proaching fast, and much uncertainty was expressed by the delegates with respect to what will happen at the deadline date with so much work still left to be done by states. Furthermore a presentation was provided by IFATCA PCX on the Federation’s Vision for ATC in 2035, which generated a lively de-bate. The committee also received a presen-tation on the Effects of Nutrition on Stress in ATCOs, by Dr. Carolina Taveras of the Do-minican Republic. The information from the presentation will be considered by the Pro-fessional and Legal Committee (PLC) when discussing the subject of Diabetes, which was put on their work programme together with 9 other subjects. PLC, chaired by Marjolein Hooijboer (the Netherlands), will once again comprise 10 Member Associations, including some of whom are new to the work of the committee. ^
4 2010 IFATCA Conference
THE CONTROLLER18
Technical and Professional IssuesTechnical CommitteeBesides the reports from IFAT-CA’s global representatives in various panels and groups, Committee B tackled six work studies; these working papers covered a wide range of sub-jects, with some intended to support the ICAO Panel Rep-resentatives or the ICAO ANC Representative. Other subjects discussed were: incorrect flight identification, a review of pol-icy on missed approach after a visual approach, a study on route clearances and associ-ated requirements and the operational use of level restric-tions in SIDs, STARs and other published routes.
The latter item was discussed at length: a survey of ICAO documentation revealed a seri-ous safety issue with regard to the use of level restrictions. Al-though the goal of the amend-ment was to harmonize these procedures, several countries have not, or only partially, intro-duced these new procedures and associating phraseology. The subject generated much debate with participation from several Member Associations from every region. As a result of this, recommendations were accepted asking for:• Harmonized SID and STAR
design.• The development of phra-
seology to easily indicate
whether published restrictions are to be followed or not.
• And an explicit indication whether published restrictions are to be followed or not.
After discussing the principles, more ex-change of views took place on the phraseol-ogy that currently is being considered.
Tinus Olivier of South Africa stepped down as Chairman of the Technical and Opera-tions Committee. Matthijs Jongeneel of the Netherlands was elected in the position of Chairman TOC. He will coordinate the work of representatives from Dominican Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and USA, who were elect-ed as TOC members.
Joint sessionA combined session of Committees B and C was given updates from several international representatives, regional reports, and four work studies. Issues with current the ICAO provisions on stop bars were highlighted. Additionally, a review of the ICAO Runway Incursion Causal Factors Identification Form revealed that the questions in the forms are not in conformance with the Just Culture Concept. The formulated proposals will al-low the Executive Board and the ANC repre-sentative to approach ICAO in order to get things changed. The Chief of the ATM Sec-tion of ICAO, Mr Chris Dalton, also addressed the combined session. In his presentation, he highlighted that IFATCA has become very good at providing expert knowledge and therewith contributing greatly in the pro-duction of standards, but this was followed by the remark that IFATCA should seriously consider extending the focus to include roll-out of these standards.
4 Committee B in session Photo credit: Luis Fuentes
4 Committee C in session Photo credit: Luis Fuentes
4 2010 IFATCA Conference
THE CONTROLLER 19
IFATCA Panel
Flying VFR in Dominican Republic
^ by Philip Marien, Incoming Editor
by Philippe Domogala, Outgoing Editor
the environment and climate change, he saw collaboration to facilitate CDO was an op-erational imperative where all stakeholders will benefit.
Skysoft, a subsidiary of Sky-guide – the Swiss ATM provid-er – presented their philosophy on the development and use of open-source software in Air Traffic Management. Open-source allows contributors to make changes to software, as long as they share those changes with the community so that all can benefit from it. Open-source software is rela-tively common outside ATC but it is probably the first time it has been used for actual traf-fic displays. ^ [email protected]
business jet and Mirage aircraft) said: “a good airplane must be beautiful as well”. But although this model was certified, you have to be careful: the aircraft is based on an ultra-light design and a Rotax is not a Lycoming: if you make step turns (as I like to do) you will get a stall warn-ing! Nevertheless another won-derful experience! ^ [email protected]
in the air. Amongst other things, they have used it to define the approach separation for the Airbus 380.
Chris Dalton, Chief, Air Traffic Management Section of the ICAO Air Navigation Bureau, made a presentation on continuous descent operations (CDO) and how airspace design, instrument flight procedures, air traffic con-trol (ATC) facilitation and flight techniques can enable continuous descent profiles, even in high density airspace. CDO is one of sev-eral tools available to aircraft operators and air navigation service providers (ANSPs) to increase safety, flight predictability, and air-space capacity, while reducing noise, con-troller-pilot communications, fuel burn and emissions. Current efforts to facilitate CDO attempt to strike a balance between the ide-al fuel efficient and environmentally friendly procedures and the capacity requirements of a specific airport or airspace. Consider-ing the high cost of fuel and concerns about
fun, as long as you keep a good distance be-hind of course! A B757 was in front and I had to insist on getting at least a 3 minute gap be-hind for take off. Flying along the coastline at 500 ft is a marvel! Back in the circuit after 1,5 hours, we were cleared to cross the run-way at 1000ft. We passed overhead a B737 landing and were then cleared to dive down fast and land before an A-320 on long final. Good efficient ATC, I like that, and on top no landing fees in Punta Cana!
My impression of the aircraft: the P2002 is a 2-seater using a 100Hp Rotax, with low fuel consumption and it even looks good. As Old Marcel Dassault (designer of the Mystere 20s
On Thursday afternoon, Executive Vice Presi-dent Technical, Andrew Beadle, introduced the topics for the IFATCA Panel. Tradition-ally, industry experts update the conference delegates on some selected topics, including latest developments in systems, procedures and/or concepts.
Two projects were introduced that attempt to address the effects of wake vortex turbulence during approach. A trial in the USA looked at spacing aircraft on parallel approaches such that the trailing aircraft would stay in front of the wake of the preceding one.
Peter Eriksen, head of the Airports Unit in the Eurocontrol EEC in Brétigny, presented how they use LIDAR – an optical detection system that can ’see’ wake vortices – to study new types of aircraft and determine the required separation minima on approach. The system works very similar to radar but uses light in-stead of radio waves to detect disturbance
Dominicana is VFR country: large airspace, few airports and (normally) very good weath-er with excellent visibility. The kind of “su-per CAVOK” one dreams of in our polluted industrial countries. Renting an aircraft was very easy: a call to the conference Organiz-ing Committee, who put me in contact with the Santo Domingo Aero club, which owns a few Tecnams P2002s and Cessna 152s.
Having never flown a Tecnam, I chose that one and Manuel, a local pilot brought the air-craft to Punta Cana. First good thing about the Tecnam is that it is cheap: 85 USD for one hour. No flight plan was required: taxi and takeoff in between a lot of large jets is always
4 Impressive VFR Flying Photo credit: DP
4 Philippe & Manuel Photo credit: DP
^
the booked flight date. People were simply expected to return on the first available flight after regular services had resumed. While there were certainly people getting stuck in worse places, a full extra week in paradise was not as enjoyable as one could expect. Hours on a laptop with a sketchy in-ternet connection trying to find out who was flying where, expensive phone calls home, to insurance companies and exploring the limits of your credit cards or cash is not at all a re-laxing way, despite the fact that it may look like an extended holiday. To top it all off, a 5.1 magnitude earthquake could clearly be felt on April 18th. While there was no damage, it raised the question of what else the stranded would have to en-dure before being able to return home. On the following days, people started leaving for airports in the south of Europe that re-mained open and over the next few days, as airports opened up closer to their home, to places further north. All in all, it took over a week for everyone to get home. The longest we know of at the moment, took 84 hours to get from Punta Cana back to Scandinavia – If you’ve seen the movie Planes, Trains & Auto-mobiles (1987, Steve Martin & John Candy), you have a good idea of what some people went through!
In addition, while some employers appear to be understanding, other bureaucrats were very quick to point out that it would simply cost their staff extra leave days. In one case, a manager said that ‘people were lucky not to be fired for unauthorised absence…’. Weird sense of humour some people have. ^
but as there was none, they continued to fly the next days. Some other airlines moved their fleet to Toulouse and Bordeaux. From there, they managed to get all their pax out without too much delay. Flights to Madrid and Lisbon operated normally and we’d like to extend our gratitude to the few airlines that offered stranded controllers a way back: in particular Iberworld of Spain, White of Portugal and Corsair of France. ^
4 2010 IFATCA Conference
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Trapped in Paradise
On April 15th, day 4 of the con-ference, the first reports came in from family, colleagues and friends: large parts of the Eu-ropean airports and airspace were closing due to a cloud of volcanic ash. The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, a volcano in the geologically extremely active Iceland, created a ash-cloud that threatened aircrafts’ en-gines and windscreens. It quickly became apparent that airport and airspace closures would hamper travel home for those going to or via a Europe-an airport. As news and predic-tions trickled in, people were looking at the available op-tions to travel home. As flights to Europe dried up, people had to prepare themselves for an extended stay. Controllers don’t like being out of con-
trol very much and with no clear indication of how long the situation would continue – or even worsen – people can up with some very creative and even ambitious alterna-tives to travel home. Others, concerned by reports of train, ferry and rental-car chaos, believed that it wouldn’t make a discernable difference and chose to stay put. A short get-together was organised twice a day to keep everyone updated of the latest information. Contact numbers for local airline representa-tives and offices were collected and shared amongst all delegates. Interesting to see were the different ways that different airlines handled this unprec-edented crisis: some kept passengers in-formed via SMS, e-mail and websites. Others simply cancelled flights without any further information. They left it up to passengers to find out what was happening via expensive calls to their European ’service’ centres: Mar-tinair and Air France told several delegates that the first opportunity to return home would be on April 30th – a full 2 weeks after
While some airlines simply abandonded their customers, others did what they could to help them. German Condor for instance sent an empty aircraft as soon as possible to get the stranded passengers. 24h after the ban, Germany accepted VFR flights in their airspace below FL200. The first flight from Punta Cana to Frankfurt flew a southerly route to Austria, then descended to FL140 to enter German airspace VFR at night. On ar-rival the engines were checked for damage,
Eyjafjallajökull messes up IFATCA Conference travel
Different ways to leave paradise.4 Checking the engines after landing in FRA Photo credit: DP
4 Pict. above: Cancelled flights in Frankfurt Photo credit: DP
4 Pict. left: Earthquake epicentre was just south of Punta Cana. Photo credit: US Geological Survey
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Two Days of Flight Safety
Two-day seminars have been organized for several years already.
Swedish Association hosts International Seminar
4 David Gleave Photo credit: PP
4 Patrik Peters talked on CISM Photo credit: PP
by Johanna Karlzén/SATCA & Patrik Peters/IFATCA^
misunderstandings, which is part of the agency’s Air Ground Communications Safety Im-provement Strategy, featuring short video clips, explanations and tutoring material. He also introduced a Flight-Safety-Wikipedia, called SKYBRARY. Access to this public knowl-edge base on flight safety re-lated topics can be obtained via www.skybrary.aero.
A normal reaction to an abnormal eventPatrik Peters, supervisor at the EUROCONTROL Maastricht UACC, presented Critical In-cident Stress Management. What is a Critical Incident?
or lack of training and knowledge. In the case of the Martinair DC10 crash at Faro/Portugal for example the wind meter for the active runway was out of order. The wind read out to the pilot was measured for the opposite runway and therefore inaccurate – the fatal wind shear on short final could not be de-tected. David taught us about the Comair accident at Blue Grass airport in Lexington/USA, where construction works, missing NO-TAM information and unclear markings led to a deadly runway overrun. It is David’s belief that the controllers’ knowledge of how pilots perceive their environment is lacking. Are you aware of the repercussions of technical system failures, the limited visibility from an airliners cockpit or how certain procedures are to be read, understood and followed?
How does a plane react with engine failure, where does it go and do we – pilots and con-trollers – understand procedures always in the same way? Is standard phraseology always clear? Bengt Collin from EUROCONTROL informed the delegates about ALLClear – an initiative dealing with the issue of phraseology and
The Swedish ATCA under the chairmanship of president Helena Sjöström held their 2010 Flight Safety Seminar mid-March. These two-day seminars have been organized for sever-al years already in combination with SATCA’s Annual General Meeting, allowing delegates to not only attend their associations’ gath-ering, but also get to learn something new about flight safety and of course spend some valuable social time together.
About 45 tower, approach and area con-trollers met in Knivsta, some 60km north of Stockholm on March 17th for the first – the “international” – day of the seminar, which featured presentations by David Gleave, an international incident and accident investiga-tor; Bengt Collin, ATC Operational Expert of EUROCONTROL; and IFATCA Executive Vice President Europe, Patrik Peters.
Safety around the globeDavid Gleave, Chief Safety Expert, took us on a journey to various airports with peculiar safety zones and questionable backup power plants as well as to some famous accident sites. Human factors, bad technical inter-faces and infrastructure often coincide with unclear or missing procedures, complacency
efficiently as possible with the teams that work in the region. I will try to live and work this dream that the members of IFATCA provided me and I will try to cope with all those new tasks the best I can. ^
started: that is modernizing IFATCA in the sense of creating a new corporate identity – standardizing and making our publications, templates, etc. more attractive to improve how we are seen from the outside. I also want to assist my EVP Europe successor Željko and our new President Alexis to try and resolve any outstanding issues that need IFATCA’s continued attention. I want to be part of a leading team. ^
Željko Oreški is from Croatia, 40 years old and controller and deputy head of Zagreb ACC.
Philippe: What do you intend to do?Željko: I want to be responsi-ble for the future organisation – that is how we will work – within our fast changing Euro-pean Region. The most impor-tant thing is that we continue to operate as flexibly and
Patrik Peters, from Germany (EGATS/Euro-control), is 42 years old, a controller and su-pervisor at the Eurocontrol Maastricht UAC in the Netherlands. Until the 2010 IFATCA Conference, he served as IFATCA EVP Europe.
Philippe: Why did you run for Deputy President after being EVP Europe?Patrik: I want to continue with what we’ve
New IFATCA EVP Europe
New IFATCA Deputy President
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4 New Deputy President, Patrik Peters Photo credit: Fuentes
4 New EVP Europe, Željko Oreški Photo credit: DP
Remote Tower Concept – threat or possibility?Increased competition, increasing service charges and interest in the project from abroad led to the development of the RTC. Per Högberg, Head of business area Tower & Approach, explained that RTC has the po-tential to provide ATS to smaller airports, as-sist the provision of 24 hour operations and offer service provision for multiple towers from one central location.
Visual separation though continues to be a problem of the RTC, as well as a possible de-crease in flexibility and efficiency in a semi-busy environment. First applications might be seen in nighttime service provision.
This SATCA Flight Safety Seminar proved to be an attractive package of high quality pres-entations, paired with an informative Annual General Meeting and a casual get-together in a nice atmosphere with motivated col-leagues. ^ [email protected]
How can it affect any one of us? What are the symptoms? And how can we cope with it?
Patrik explained the begin-nings of CISM and its introduc-tion into the aviation commu-nity. Proper training including refresher training and the need to incorporate CISM in the service providers’ safety man-agement system are essential. CISM is not rocket science! It is based on the “peer” model – a colleague, who is familiar to you and knows the particu-lars of the profession. CISM therefore has limitations, but is quickly available, very effective and cost efficient.
Following a panel on flight safety with all presenters, the “international” day of the sem-inar ended. SATCA delegates though continued for two more hours with the agenda of
their Annual General Meeting, before all met for the social part with a spa visit, dinner and music quiz.
The “national” day offered presentations of LFV, the Swedish air navigation service provider.
LFV, CANSO and IFATCABilly Josefsson, Senior Advisor ATM & Hu-man Performance, explained their relation with CANSO and the work in the Safety In-formation Exchange Program. He underlined the good and constructive cooperation with IFATCA, especially on the recently released documents: Global Vision on Just Culture & New Generation of Aviation Professionals.
Reporting CultureRickard Jorgensen, controller and incident investigator, talked about incident reporting. Is there a connection between the number of reports per facility and the complexity and the volume of traffic? He urged controllers to have a “suspicious attitude in a constructive manner.”
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Dispute in IrelandOne-sided media campaign during social conflict
by David Guerin, IATCA^
arrangement in which trust, honour, commitment and in-tegrity are the hallmark of our work environment at all levels! Respect! The organisations en-trusted with providing States with guidance should produce an Industrial Management Manual enforcing this; provid-ing instructions on how to be fair to staff. There is no room for imposing mercurial changes that are against contractual agreements and haven’t been negotiated in good faith. Serv-ice providers ’exist’ to provide a safe regulatory environment, a safe and efficient service to our customers; yet will happily corner controllers, giving them little alternative than to com-promise safety by stopping work to discuss their options. It is time to stop ’controller bashing’ and blaming us for the challenges that aviation presents. Or else concentrate on something positive, like how to charge passengers eve-ry time they use the aircraft’s toilet! ^ [email protected]
* The Irish association IATCA is a branch of the Irish Municipal Public and Civil Trade Union otherwise called IMPACT (not the best title for ATCOs). IMPACT is the Repub-lic’s largest public and services trade union with some 65,000 members.
with the union holding a stop-work meeting. Six months on, little has been solved.
It seems everyone had their opinion during the media frenzy which followed, with the public seemingly swallowing what they were fed. Press releases explicitly accused control-lers of excessive earnings and working short shifts. One genius announcer suggested the controllers were striking rather than using the new software akin to a Windows 7 upgrade!
“The air traffic controllers are simply a bunch of overpaid, underworked public servants…. Use the bloody law. We should arrest [them] or better still, sack them”. And referring to Reagan’s sackings in the ’80s: “We should do the same thing here -!”. For the CEO of one low cost carrier, playing to the media is just part of the game. His personal attacks and foul language didn’t offer solutions; they just stoked an arrogant reputation with more controversy. If only we earned what the pa-pers said we did!
I am a proud controller yet I felt uncomfort-able picking up the kids from school because people believe at least half of what they hear. It is rarely a knee-jerk reaction when professionals decide to withdraw services to discuss a dispute. Years of unrequited grief and disappointment over past failures to ad-dress concerns leads to anger and exaspera-tion. Controlling is a difficult, stressful job es-pecially with shift work thrown in. This takes a serious toll on ourselves and our families. Ultimately, we need to come to a working
In mid December 2009, ATCOs in Ireland were given a presentation on the economic and national climate, the challenges faced by our key customers and the shortfall in the staff pension. In addition, the airlines were demanding charge freezes and cost recovery, as increases would put them out of business. The proposed solution was an immediate implementation of drastic cutbacks across many staffing groups, to be accomplished within six weeks – hardly a negotiation. The measures imposed an 11% staff pension con-tribution while removing the pension link to salary increases; retirement delayed by two years (no early retirement means a mini-mum age of 60 with increases up to 65, and a minimum service of forty years is required to obtain a full pension); a pay freeze for at least two years; and the suspension of annual increments and any claims processes.
The rhetoric suggested the unhealthy pension scheme would then return to solvency within ten years. It’s always nice to see the control-lers supporting the airline savings plans with their own pensions. Merry Christmas!
Needless to say, negotiations failed and IATCA* balloted its members to support the withdrawal of co-operation in non-safety based projects, which formed the basis for an – as yet – unpaid salary increase negoti-ated over the preceding years. This was pro-gressed by a dozen members refusing to con-tinue on project work. The employer reacted by suspending these people without pay, which in turn led to legal industrial action,
4 Author (foreground) at work in Dublin Centre Photo credits: David G.
4 Website statement during controller action.
mean time, this strike has been postponed). VC spokeswoman, Ilona Ritter, said in an in-terview to Der Speigel Online that they no longer believed Lufthansa was interested in a constructive settlement. She says their demands were about “honouring the com-pany’s principle – If it says Lufthansa on it, there’s Lufthansa inside it. We don’t want cheap competitors from abroad flying under Lufthansa’s name and endangering our Ger-man jobs.” Asked about Lufthansa’s claim that they are losing money and market share, and that they had to react, Ritter replied: “So far it looks as if we’re supposed to save money in Germany while Lufthansa increases its profits and then buys ramshackle airlines with them. That is not the way to do things”. The struggle is clearly not over yet. ^
ty of the Spanish airspace. To make things worse, it stipulates punishments for staff go-ing directly against any Just Culture princi-ples. Evidence and timing suggests that the Royal Decree was premeditated: rather than increasing the intake of new controllers, as requested by the Unions, service provider AENA chose to sustain structural staff short-ages and rely on overtime as it was much cheaper. When this became unsustainable last year, they tried to divert the blame onto the controllers and this lead he government to issue the Royal Decree.
Considering all the above, the Spanish Con-troller Association APROCTA strongly criti-cized the Spanish Government for infringing the rights of staff and jeopardizing safety in the air. IFATCA supported this call by issuing a press release, which can be found on the IFATCA website (www.ifatca.org). ^
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In February 2010, the German pilot’s union VC announced a 4-day strike by their 4,500 pilot members at Lufthansa, Lufthansa Cargo and low-cost airline Germanwings.
The conflict centred around two basic issues: firstly, the Lufthansa pilots want to pre-vent more routes being taken over by subsidiaries such as Austrian or Swiss Airlines. These operate flights at lower costs. Secondly, the pilots want to prevent Lufthansa from ’outsourcing’ its larger aircraft. A 1992 agreement stipulated that airplanes with more than 70 seats could only be operat-ed by Lufthansa. The last con-tract between VC and Lufthan-sa management expired in
On February 11th 2010, Spanish Congress voted Royal Decree 1/2010 into effect, which stipu-lated new working conditions for civil air traffic controllers. The decree annulled the ne-gotiated agreements between service provider AENA and its employees. It was established that all the articles would be
March 2009. Since then, the two sides have failed to reach a new contract agreement. Meanwhile, the airline announced its plans to reduce costs by h 1 billion in 2010 and by the same amount in 2011.This plan included the transfer of some routes to cheaper airlines.
On 17 February VC announced that over 90 percent of its members had voted in fa-vour of a four-day strike. The strike began as planned on February 22nd and caused chaos in the major German airports where 55% (or more than one thousand) of the flights was cancelled. Lufthansa petitioned the Frankfurt Labour Court, claiming that the strike was in breach of rules governing labour relations. During the court hearing that same evening, Lufthansa and the union agreed to call off the strike and to return to the negotiating ta-ble. The strike was suspended for two weeks, after only 24 hours. Negotiations resumed but failed once more and on March 23rd VC announced another strike after Easter (in the
maintained until another agreement was signed. The decree followed an apparently orchestrated media campaign against con-trollers. Seemingly fed by insider information, the popular newspapers had extensively and one-sidedly reported on outrageously high salaries, low working hours and misbehaving control staff. The politician’s knee-jerk reac-tion was a Royal Decree that interestingly admits it violates article 41 of the Spanish Workers’ Statute. In addition, the decree appears to even violate European laws and agreements on social dialogue.
The decree stipulates a number of measures, including requiring control staff to work 1750 hours per year, decreased break periods, dis-ciplinary measures for absence, reduced ros-ter publication requirements (from 90 to 10 days), abolition of early retirement at 55 and more. As such, it is clear that the decree may well have a negative influence on the safe-
Lufthansa Strike
Spanish Royal Decree
Major European Airline Faces Social Unrest
19th Century Practices Back in Modern-Day Europe?
by Philippe Domogala, Outgoing Editor
Photo credit: © Oleg Ivanov | Dreamstime.com
4 Madrid Barajas Airport at Night
4 Left: Lufhansa pilots demonstate in front LH HQ in Frankfurt Photo credit: VC
4 Right: Empty Lufthansa counters Photo credit: DP
^
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Law defines a fixed fine of 5000 US$ for contrib-
uting to an incident.
Air Traffic Control in VenezuelaLow salaries, long working hours without breaks, no association
by Philippe Domogala, Outgoing Editor^
4 Left: Lufhansa pilots demonstate in front LH HQ in Frankfurt Photo credit: VC
number of controllers required is unclear: there’s little or no contact between the different units across the country. Low salaries are the real demotiva-tor. They all hope the system will improve soon along with their salary situation and work-ing conditions. So do we.^
System & Airspace The Venezuelan FIR is controlled by a single ACC, located at Maiquetia Airport (SVMI) near Caracas. The ACC has modern radar-based equipment, using electronic strips in conjunction with the old paper ones. The sys-tem is made by ATECH, a Brazilian company and uses BARCO screens. The Centre has 6 ACC sectors that covers the whole SVMI FIR. They have around 2000 aircraft per day in the ACC. About 400 to 500 of these land at or depart from Maiquetia airport. The 2 sector approach is located in the same building but in a separate room.
Safety & Just CultureThere is no Just Culture in place. If an inci-dent/airprox occurs, the controller is sus-pended. He or she – many of the controllers are female – has to remain in the centre for the duration of the investigation, which can last 4 to 5 days. They cannot go home, as most controllers live far away from the ACC – 200 Km away is quite normal. Venezuelan law defines a fixed fine of US$ 5000 for con-tributing to an incident. Equivalent to almost a year’s salary, no controller would be able to pay this. So far, the law has not been en-forced, but hangs over all.
AssociationVenezuela had a controller association, called ANTTA, a member of IFATCA since 1965. One of their members, Mario Salazar, was even IFATCA Regional Vice President South America from 1980 until 1989. In 1994 there was a controller strike demanding better working conditions and salaries. The military took over ATC and have remained in control ever since. Today, there is no controller as-sociation, as it is prohibited by law. Given the short career of only 15 years, there’s also lit-tle motivation to form an association.
There are around 65 controllers in Caracas and probably 250 to 300 in the whole of Ven-ezuela. They are short of staff, but the exact
During a recent visit to Caracas, I was in-formed of the actual situation of the Control-lers in that country.
Military ManagementIn Venezuela, one large organisation INAC (National Institute of Civil Aviation) regu-lates and owns everything to do with avia-tion: airports, infrastructure, services, avia-tion schools, met offices, etc. One branch of INAC called SNA, manages air navigation services. All the top management is military, but the controllers, supervisors and line man-agers are civilians.
Working ConditionsIn 2010, the working conditions of the con-trollers are as follows: a fully rated ACC controller earns US$ 580 per month. This is very low, even when taking the country’s low standard wages into account. For instance, a flight attendant will typically take US$ 700 home every month. An ATR-42 pilot earns around US$ 1500. A government secretary makes more than a controller. Not surpris-ingly, most controllers find the low salaries extremely de-motivating. The ACC has 4 teams of 10-12 controllers each. They work a fixed schedule of 3 days on, 1 day off. Day 1: 1800-0130; Day 2: 1030-1800; Day 3 (night shift): 0130-1030. Note that there is only 7.5 hours between the end of day 2 and the night shift! As there’s no overlapping duties, there no spare staff to give breaks. Sanitary and meal breaks – not that there is a restaurant or even break rooms anyway – have to be taken in low traffic, leaving one controller only at the sector. The supervisor has to work a nor-mal position. Normally, 2 instructors come in on week days to help with on the job training. Recently, controllers have been sent to Cuba for their radar training.
Retirement is after 15 years service, on full pay. This means the controller population is very young. Despite the above, most like their profession – some even love it.
4 Caracas ACC Photo credit: The Controller
4 The OPS room in Caracas ACC Photo credit: The Controller
4 Approach sector in Caracas ACC Photo credit: The Controller
AwardsThe first evening of the conference featured NATCA’s sixth annual Archie League Medal of Safety Awards, where 17 controllers were honored. Named for the first air traffic con-troller, the awards honor the very best exam-ples of skill, dedication and professionalism that NATCA members had to offer in the pursuit of a safe outcome to nine flight as-sists, one for each region of the country.
In the event that was named the overall award winner – given the NATCA President’s Award – Louisiana resident Doug White, who had limited private pilot experience in smaller aircraft, was forced to take the controls of a twin-engine King Air on Easter Sunday 2009 after the pilot died with the plane at 5,000 feet and climbing out of Marco Island, Fla. Miami Center controllers Jessica Anaya, Lisa Grimm and Nathan Henkels, and Fort Myers, Fla., controllers Dan Favio, Brian Norton and Carey Meadows worked as a team to reas-sure White, assess his flying skills to be able to successfully manipulate the controls and bring the plane down safely, and also coordi-nate the re-routing of all aircraft in this high-traffic area of South Florida.
The entire 2010 CFS conference, includ-ing the Archie League awards banquet, can be viewed online at http://www.natca.org/cfs10/. The video is broken down into the individual panels and speakers for easier browsing and viewing.
Next YearPlease visit our CFS web site at: http://www.natcacfs.com/.For more information about CFS, or to inquire about attending our 2011 event, March 21-23, 2011 in Las Vegas, please contact Hansen at [email protected], or Kelly Richardson of NATCA’s National Office at [email protected]. ^ [email protected]
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Building upon the momentum from its highly successful safety conference last year, the U.S. National Air Traffic Controllers Association’s ’Communicating for Safety’ conference (CFS), held in Orlando in March, fea-tured record attendance (over 600) and a jam-packed agenda of safety issues that were ex-plored and discussed, from hu-man factors to runway safety and modernization. That was combined with an emotional and inspirational banquet to honor the top U.S. air traffic controller flight assists of 2009.
By all accounts, the two-day event achieved NATCA’s goals of elevating the stature of its premier annual safety confer-ence within the controller, pilot and aviation communi-ties as well as educating its own membership on the top safety issues it currently faces.The event drew 400 NATCA members as well as 200 avia-tion industry professionals and students.
“CFS 2010 was a huge success with a record number of NAT-CA members and other safety
professionals in attendance,” said NATCA Safety Committee Chairman Steve Hansen. “NATCA’s continued support, and its drive to continually improve the conference has made CFS one of the premier safety confer-ences in the country.”
Full ProgramCFS hosted a wide variety of speakers and panels this year, with highlights including panels on human factors and NextGen, the Air Traffic Safety Action Program (ATSAP, which provides controllers with a non-punitive method for reporting safety issues), runway safety and safety management systems. The first day also featured an in-depth discussion between top NATCA and Federal Aviation Administration officials entitled, “Collabora-tion Under a New Administration.” It includ-ed NATCA President Paul Rinaldi, NATCA Executive Vice President Trish Gilbert, FAA Acting Deputy Administrator J. David Griz-zle and FAA Air Traffic Organization Chief Operating Officer Hank Krakowski. “This conference has always been very valuable in bringing together controllers, along with some pilots, to discuss ways to communicate better and learn more about important safe-ty and human factors topics, and this year was no exception,” said NATCA Director of Safety and Technology Dale Wright.
Speaker LineupThe conference also featured an impressive lineup of speakers. Included were Captain Robert Bragg, the Pan Am First Officer in the 1977 accident in Tenerife, which remains the deadliest accident in aviation history, and also U.S. National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman. In addi-tion, Professor Nancy Leveson from Massa-chusetts Institute of Technology, spoke about the relationship between human factors and NextGen, providing insight into what impact all the new technology will have on control-lers that have to interface with it.
A huge success with a record number of
NATCA members and other safety profession-
als in attendance.
Communicating for Safety Conference 2010NATCA hosts successful inter- sector forum on safety
by Doug Church, NATCA^
4 Paul Rinaldi, NATCA President Photo credit: NATCA
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Regional Aviation Safety Group-Pan AmericaRASG-PA Discusses Regional Safety Issues and Solutions
by Adolfo Zavala, Regional Officer, ICAO^
4 Audience at the 2nd RASG-PA meeting in Bogota, Colombia Photo credit: AB
tions would be reduced given the increased surveillance pos-sible through access to the op-erator’s flight data. Significant achievements have been made on both these projects.
The success of RASG-PA will depend on the continued par-ticipation and contributions of RASG-PA members. RASG-PA Secretary Loretta Martin, ICAO Regional Director for the North American, Central American and Caribbean Regional Office in Mexico City, and Secretary
of RASG-PA, has said, “This system needs to continue and grow, with more funding being secured in order for the RASG-PA to continue meeting its ob-jectives.” Currently RASG-PA inkind support donors include Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Jamaica, United States (CAST), ACI/ LAC, ALTA, Airbus, Boe-ing, COCESNA (ACSA), IATA, IFALPA, and FSF. Technical support from ICAO SAM office and ICAO Headquarters is also supplied. ^
membership approved the creation of three working groups to address the three top aviation risks in the Pan American region, which are Runway Excursions, Controlled Flight into Terrain and Loss of Control – In-flight. The working groups will develop and recommend safety enhancements, which will be forwarded to the executive steering com-mittee for approval and a request to proceed with implementation.
The risk areas identified by RASG-PA are not just pilot issues, not just airport issues, not just civil aviation authority issue, but are avia-tion safety issues that affect all stakeholders. Therefore, in order to effectively develop long-lasting and successful mitigation strate-gies, the participation of organizations such as IFATCA, IFALPA, ACI, CANSO and others who are stakeholders in the region is vital to the success of RASG-PA. At the time of this writing, RASG-PA, along with industry part-ner ALTA (Latin American and Caribbean Air Transport Association) is holding its “First An-nual Pan American Aviation Safety Summit” in Sao Paulo, Brazil. This summit has brought together over 200 interested stakeholders and has provided participants with important avia-tion safety information, and will provide a fo-rum for specific training to mitigate the top risk areas in the NAM/CAR/SAM ICAO regions.
RASG-PA is also working on several other avi-ation safety projects key to the region. These projects are aligned with the objectives of the GASP and the GASR. The first project under Global Safety Initiative (GSI-3) will address the protection of safety information and protect aviation operational personnel who provide the reports. The protection of safety informa-tion is key to an open reporting system. The second project involves implementing a pilot program to share flight data with the aim of establishing a system in which an air operator would provide raw flight data for regulatory oversight. In turn, the numbers of inspec-
The RASG-PA was established in November 2008, as the focal point to ensure harmoni-zation and coordination of safety efforts to reduce aviation risks in the North American, Central American, Caribbean NAM/CAR, and South American (SAM) Regions. In order to achieve this risk reduction, RASG-PA pro-motes the implementation by all stakehold-ers of resulting safety initiatives. To date, RASG-PA has held two meetings bringing to-gether participants from almost every State/Territory in the NAM/CAR/SAM region. What makes RASG-PA truly unique is the participa-tion of international organizations, airlines, airports and manufacturers in a collabora-tive effort to develop risk mitigation strate-gies. IFATCA was present at the first RASG-PA Meeting, which was held in Puntarenas, Costa Rica, and holds a seat on the RASG-PA executive steering committee.
RASG-PA is using the framework provided by the Global Aviation Safety Plan (GASP) and Global Aviation Safety Roadmap (GASR) to develop and implement a work program in the region and to ensure the execution of those resulting action plans in the region. Major efforts by RASG-PA include coordinat-ing safety activities at the regional and sub- regional level to avoid duplication of efforts; facilitating the sharing of safety information and experiences among all stakeholders in the region; analyzing the risks to civil aviation at the regional level, developing action plans necessary to mitigate the risks, and coordinat-ing and supporting their implementation; and conducting follow-up activities as required.
By bringing interested stakeholders together, States can see a significant saving in valuable resources by sharing work on similar issues and then benefit from the products devel-oped by RASG-PA, which will bring measur-able improvements in aviation safety. During the second RASG-PA Meeting held in Bogota, Colombia, last November, the
The risk areas identified […] are aviation safety
issues that affect all stakeholders.
Approximately 100 controllers are still facing trial in military courts due to industrial action back in March 2007, despite a promise by the government not to punish any of them. The Air Force had been given free reign to solve the so-called “Air Chaos” or “the controllers´ problem”, and since then many problems are being solved by the use of force. For exam-ple, if a supervisor refuses to do something because he / she thinks it is not safe, he / she is simply relieved from their duties as supervi-sors and is replaced by a younger one.The Air Force is trying to put an end to our Federa-tion and other controller associations despite the fact these are private organizations and are constitutionally permitted. Despite a lack of any evidence, they argue that we are harm-ful to the Air Force. While we are confident that this will not hold up in court, it will require yet another legal battle and will probably con-sume more of our time and scarce financial resources. ^ [email protected]
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Despite the statement from the Brazilian Congress on the need to demilitarize the provision of the air traffic control services, our government does not seem willing to get involved due to the delicate relationship with the military forces.
There are implicit threats against those who belong to an association and junior control-lers are actively discouraged joining associations. In addi-tion, with the lack of a demilita-rization prospect, younger col-leagues are determined to quit as soon as possible. It concerns us because shortage is a real problem and new controllers’ lack of interest in air traffic con-trol issues is creating a genera-tion of less experienced con-trollers. Although we cannot establish a link between this and a number of near misses (happening everywhere and
everyday), we are sure that this, somehow, affects the performance of an entire ATC team during a shift.
In some places, military controllers are re-quired to march for 8 or 10 km before their duty as part of compulsory military exercises. During such an ’exercise’, a military control-ler tried to commit suicide by running toward the runway of Rio de Janeiro’s International Airport (Galeão). Three aircraft had to abort their landing and one aborted its take-off. Some days later, the same march happened but far away from the airport and under an armed escort. After it, the controllers re-turned to their ATC Unit to assume their op-erational duties. Some months before this, a civil controller had a heart attack and died in the Galeão Tower during a day shift. The controllers kept on working with their col-league’s dead body in the tower. On the insistence of the local management, opera-tions went on as if nothing had happened.
Nowadays, 90% of the associations´ leader-ship is removed from active controller duties. There are only 5 local associations still active.
Brazilian ChaosATC is Still Dominated by Military in Brazil
by Carlos Henrique Trifilio da Silva, President FEBRATCA, Brazil Federation^
come apparent during the forthcoming Soc-cer World Cup in June 2010. The planned recruitment of new controllers did not bring the expected relief and training has now been stopped to allow consolidation time to existing staff. The authorities have devised a plan aiming to give 100% or more capacity
for short periods of up to 2 to 3 hours when the
peaks are pre-dicted. But that implies a lack of capacity is una-
voidable at dur-ing the rest of the
day. The number of en-route sectors
and approach sectors open will depend on the staff available on each day. They are ex-pecting 30% more traffic during that period but they confirm that safety will not be com-promised. The lack of staff may well result in delays to flights during this world event.
On the positive side, a lot of improvement has been made to the ATM systems: upgrades to AIM systems and a Surface Movement radar (SMR) has been introduced in Cape Town that will help in low visibility operations. The Johannesburg Surface Movement Radar is however not yet operational yet and it’s not expected to be operational before the event. A new air traffic flow management (ATFM) system should also be operational by the time you read this. ^
During the IFATCA Confer-ence, the South African con-trollers’ association reported that although much progress has been made, there are still staff shortages on some sec-tors and airports. They expect the full impact of this will be-
South Africa Delays expected during the world cup
4 South African fans Photo credit: Chris Kirchhoff/ mediaclubsouthafrica.com
4 B737 over Ipanema beach in Brazil Photo credit: © Roza | Dreamstime.com
The controller – Journal of Air Traffic Control
188 w x 86 h mm, colorName: Ins. TheController_AMBA DUK 02.10
Danube Professional MBA Aviation (MBA)for Professionals in the aviation industryInformation: [email protected], Tel. +43 (0)2732 893-2113, www.mba-krems.at
Danube University Krems, Danube Business School, Dr.-Karl-Dorrek-Strasse 30, 3500 Krems, Austria, www.donau-uni.ac.at
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4 Africa & Middle East
RVSM in West AfricaLooking Back on a Successful Implementation
by Mick Atiemo, Regional Editor^ 4 Khartoum ACC
Photo credit: DP
The controller – Journal of Air Traffic Control
188 w x 86 h mm, colorName: Ins. TheController_AMBA DUK 02.10
Danube Professional MBA Aviation (MBA)for Professionals in the aviation industryInformation: [email protected], Tel. +43 (0)2732 893-2113, www.mba-krems.at
Danube University Krems, Danube Business School, Dr.-Karl-Dorrek-Strasse 30, 3500 Krems, Austria, www.donau-uni.ac.at
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We mean business!
Ins. TheController_AMBA DUK 02.10:: 10.03.2010 10:58 Uhr Seite 1
ful in the pre-RVSM era where options were limited, but now with RVSM, there is little or no stress at all.
Overall it has been an interest-ing process, bringing a lot of flexibility into air traffic man-agement (ATM) in our part of the world. Conforming with the international community is good for the industry as a whole. To all who contributed to the planning, preparation and implementation from transition to date, bravo and a good work done. ^ [email protected]
cases, these are very remote oceanic areas (with reference to the responsible area con-trol centre), where the only means of com-munication is by HF radios and positions to be reported are dead reckoning i.e. without reference to navigational facilities. The as-signment of lower levels where aircraft burn more fuel (with economic and environmental consequences) due to congestion is over for now. Random routing through the airspaces has been enhanced to a large extent. Co-ordination, transfer of communication and control has improved tremendously, bring-ing a lot of options, especially in a region where there is a mixture of both radar and non-radar FIRs. During peak periods, traffic is in most cases in same direction i.e. north-bound at specific periods and south-bound at other periods. These were more stress-
Reduced vertical separation minima (RVSM) could not have come at any better time for the region than when it did. It was a neces-sary and right change. It was a whole new ex-perience that was well prepared. This result-ed in a smooth, incident-free transition. Since then, there has been a lot to appreciate.
The planning of the implementation took a lot of time and involved all aspects of air navigation service provision, from control-ler training, to changed facilities and proce-dures. With the current dense traffic levels and the anticipated growth in the future, air-craft operations with regards to economics and the environment and the Atlantic Ocean random routing area (AORRA), RVSM would not have been more appreciated at any time than now. As was anticipated, RVSM has added about 100 percent of capacity to what existed before i.e. fourteen thousand feet of vertical air space. Previously only three east-bound and three westbound flight levels were available. Today, six levels exist in each direction. This has given a lot of options by way of vertical separation, which is the most convenient when compared to longitudinal and lateral separations.
The experience has been very beneficial in all aspects of the service delivery process. It has especially given area centres the flexibility to efficiently and effectively manage traffic safe-ly and expeditiously. The AORRA airspaces (Accra FIR and Abidjan sub-FIR) have seen better operations due increased options in flight levels for vertical separation. In most
New IFATCA EVP Africa and Middle East Hisham Bazian is from Jordan, 51 years old and a controller and supervisor in Amman ACC.
Philippe: What are your plans?Hisham: My plans can be summarized in 3 ’C’s and 1 ’M’: Coordinate, Co-operate, Commu-nicate and Manage all IFATCA members in my Region, and within the IFATCA Executive Board and the Civil Aviation Authorities, for the benefit of safety, regularity and efficiency.
Philippe: You were elected for one year only. Are you planning to continue after this term?Hisham: I will see how it works and if I help things forward by continuing of course continue. ^ [email protected]
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and departures” at certain major airports around the world. Examples were shown of possible presentation formats of this New-TAF for Australia (Brisbane), USA (New York), France & Hong Kong. Some of the elements shown in these presentations included a ’Nowcast’ out to 100 km, (up to 1 hour into the future in 6 minute time intervals), a Short Term Forecast within 300km for up to 6 hours (up-dated every 6 hours) and an ’Outlook’ from 6 hours to 2 days (up-dated every 12 hours).
CAeM-XIV also had presentations on the meteorological aspects of SESAR & Next-GEN as these future ATC systems will require more accurate input of meteorological data. In turn, there will be an impact of SESAR and NextGEN on other parts of the world.
There was an admission on the part of the Chairman that the WMO and AMOFSG had come a very long way with the concept of NewTAF without user input (IFATCA), and that this needed to be corrected. (IFALPA do have a representative on AMOFSG). I have to agree with him. As prime users of mete-orological information, ATC should have a say in what sort of products we need and use. Annex 3 has developed over the years with some input from IFALPA and none from IFATCA. The WMO are desperate for IFATCA input, especially with regard to the NewTAF. It is generally conceded that 70% of all air-craft delays are weather related. Weather has a huge impact on Air Traffic Control on a daily basis. It’s about time we had a say in what we want. ^
4 Asia Pacific
THE CONTROLLER30
On two occasions in the past 3 years, I have had the oppor-tunity to present a 1-day semi-nar to airport meteorological forecasters and observers. This was at the request of the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO), the meteorological service provider for Hong Kong. It gave me an opportunity to show the fore-casters what influence weather has on our daily operations. It was apparent that, especially in this part of the world, these people had little idea of the ef-fects of their forecasts on pilots and controllers. Their under-standing of aviation in general is also limited – All they do is follow ICAO Annex 3. They have no real idea on how wind-shear, crosswind, temperature or even thunderstorms affect approach and departure paths, in addition to operations over and around the immediate vi-cinity of the airport.
Certainly in the Hong Kong area, weather can have a huge effect on aircraft on approach and departure that are well outside the area of the Termi-nal Aerodrome Forecast (TAF). As you all know, the TAF is only valid out to 5nm/8km from the aerodrome. We’ve had occa-sions where arriving aircraft
have to deviate and hold, without carrying any holding or diversion fuel based on the Hong Kong TAF. Occasionally, the Hong Kong TAF fails to tell pilots what they have to go through, from a meteorological point of view, to get onto the ILS and land, or to be able to follow the SID on departure. Dur-ing my presentations to HKO, I repeatedly emphasized that pilots and controllers need some form of an extended Terminal Area Forecast, out to say 150 nm. This would al-low ATC to better pre-plan possible weather deviations. From the pilots’ perspective, it means they could foresee enough fuel for the possible holding/deviation/alternate.
It’s not just the forecast that is important. Both ATC and pilots need real-time mete-orological ’products’ on which to base their decision-making. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to be invited, along with John Wagstaff (former EVPASP), to the 14th WMO Commission for Aeronautical Meteorology conference in Hong Kong last February. Held only every 4 years, one of the key elements of CAeM-XIV was the concept of ’New-TAF’. In 2006, the WMO and ICAO, through the Aerodrome Meteorological Observation and Forecast Study Group (AMOFSG), had already started on the concept of ’extended terminal area forecasting’. Unbeknown to me, an HKO representative had shown part of my HKO presentations to the WMO in Geneva.
During CAeM-XIV, statements were made by delegates that “there was a world need for an extended area TAF to cover approaches
Meteorology14th Session of WMO Commission for Aeronautical Meteorology
by Phil Parker, Regional Editor^
4 Head table at CAeM-XIV, Hong Kong Photo credit: HKO
4 ATC Global 2010
THE CONTROLLER 31
2010 ATC Global Exhibition9th – 11th March 2010, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
by Philippe Domogala, Outgoing Editor ^
Finally a new company (to me at least) involved in flow man-agement, METRON, was clearly not affected by the crisis: they sponsored everything they could, including lunches and coffee breaks, during the whole 3 days. It proved to be very ef-fective as everyone visiting now knows their name. But more importantly, their approach to ATFM isn’t bad: have a look to www.metronaviation.com and see what you think. ^
Contrary to systems often demonstrated elsewhere, this is not a future technology or concept, but has been actually implemented and used to improve capacity and safety.
On other stands, companies were showing their concept of the future: Thales presented a concept console, with a Recaro leather seat – also used in some luxury cars – embedded in a futuristic Star Trek-like multifunction cover. It faced a very large LCD display and used a large touch screen as HMI. Not sure we’ll ever see this in our Ops rooms, but it will surely help the playstation-generation kids to consider becoming a controller!
Another bizarre view of the future was a pri-mary radar antenna turning on top of the Lockheed-Martin stand. Primary radar the future of ATC?
If you had expected that the global financial crisis would have affected the size and glam-our of the 2010 ATC Global Exhibition, think again… Company stands in Amsterdam’s RAI exhibition complex must have had simi-lar budgets, if not more, than previous years. Possibly the most exuberant stand was that of AENA, the Spanish ANSP. As if the stand wasn’t enough, they gave a big party with champagne and finger-food, to celebrate their excellence and efficiency.
Eurocontrol was also prominently in the pic-ture, not necessarily in size but showing in-teresting new features. The new Flight Data Processing System of Maastricht UAC was displayed, impressing everyone who visited it. Downlink FMS data to the controller screens and instant on-screen civil-military coordina-tion were amongst the features demoed.
4 Thales console
4 Lockheed-Martin Primary radar
4 AENA stand
4 Eurocontrol stand
All photo credits: DP
pensions, lower the cost of support staff, downsize management, out-source non-core services and buy off-the-shelf hardware. If that doesn’t work, the next set of measures can be: reduce staff numbers, reduce tacti-cal ATC and adopt less flexible control pro-cedures, reduce capacity, filter traffic peaks, force airlines to change schedules, but that will all lead to increasing delays, more gate-to-gate flying hours, so unhappy clients.Niel Panzer of Boeing said that ANSPs do not have competition; they are all monopo-lies, even the so called “privatized” ones. In monopolies, there is no incentive to reduce costs, on the contrary. He advocated to bring competition between ANSPs will change the visions and the costs forever!
Dieter Kaden, Chairman and Chief Executive of German provider DFS, asked whether he meant a State choosing one service provider above another for a given airspace; or an air-line getting the option to choose between 2 or 3 service providers within the same air-space. Mr. Panzer had to agree that the first option was the only possible one.
Was there any final outcome or decision? Of course not. Everyone has their own solutions. One thing was recurrent however: if the crisis continues, there will be changes for the con-trollers. And those may include lower salaries or less favourable working conditions. What will happen when traffic recovers, like it al-ways did in the past after a crisis? That will be for next years’ debate I guess. ^
4 ATC Global 2010
THE CONTROLLER32
The main theme this year was on debating the need to re-duce costs but without reduc-ing the services, in the face of the current economic crisis.
Everyone says that ATM uses highly skilled personnel which are very expensive. I guess they mean technicians, engi-neers and controllers, rather than the managers. Everyone agrees that high safety stand-ards come at a cost and that 80% of those costs are fixed. But are they really? Today, some ANSP’s like Spain and Ireland are already revisiting conditions of employment, overtime, training, working hours, etc. as part of bigger ef-forts to reduce their costs.
But the global shortage of controllers means that if those measures are too extreme, people might be tempted to move to wealthier ANSP’s or
even other industries, leaving those ANSPS in a worse situation. On the other hand, ex-perience shows that transfer of controllers from one place to another requires long vali-dations periods. Long means expensive as well...
It was mentioned that ATM fees for the air-lines are only between 3 and 5% of their total operating costs. Fuel is 25-35%, the airlines own labour costs 25-30%, leasing costs 20-30%, maintenance 10%, airport fees 5-7% and catering 3%. Therefore even if we all manage a 10% reduction in ATM costs, it will have very little effect on the overall airline operating costs. We were also told that both SESAR and NEXTGEN will not significantly reduce the overall costs for the airlines. Then the “leaders in ATM” spoke their visions. Paul Barron of UK NATS said New Technol-ogy should be implemented only if it deliv-ers benefits – meaning tangible, measurable benefits. NATS reduced its own costs by 15% in 2009, without affecting safety and all’s well in the British Empire.
Thorgeir Palsson of Iceland ISAVIA beat the UK: he said Iceland reduced its cost last year by 22%, but this was largely due to the de-valuation of their currency! He expected no real changes in human attitude: “People are greedy; they all want maximum rewards for the minimum effort “he said. Then a debate ensued on what an ANSP can really do to re-duce its costs. On the first list of steps were: reducing salaries, increase working hours, increase ATCO output, reduce benefits and
ATM fees for the airlines are only between 3
and 5% of their total operating costs.
All about Reducing Costs2010 ATC Global Conference
by Philippe Domogala, Outgoing Editor ^ 4 The debates during conference
Photo credit: DP
4 CANSO OPS Conference
THE CONTROLLER 33
We risk an increased demand […] to auto-mate the human ele-
ment out of existence.
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Graham Lake, Director General CANSO
^ by Philippe Domogala, Outgoing Editor
Amsterdam, March 2010
CANSO will move into a more active facilitation role in Trans-forming Global ATM Perform-ance. This will be achieved by working together with our fellow stakeholders in the industry, im-proving together and leading by example. Challenging? Yes, but a privilege too. But perhaps the biggest challenge is finding an effective way to improve the col-lective external communications of the ANSP. Providing consist-ent messages that politicians and customers understand and respect.
Ph: What are you views on SESAR?G: SESAR is a freight train of Eu-ropean activity where service and supplier industry is helping us to understand what we will need for single European sky and how to get it. But SESAR will have to provide value for money. There has to be tangible worthwhile re-sults at the end. Interoperability for example worries me. There are excellent precedents in the avionics industry and the mo-bile telecommunications indus-try, where pragmatic consensus based interoperability solutions have been found. I’m not sure we have learned the lessons yet for ATM. CANSO will work hard to help in these areas. ^
creased demand (by the press and politicians) to automate the human element out of existence, particularly in en-route ATC. Cost and efficiency are key considerations for all service industries.
Ph: What was so extreme in Spain for CANSO?G: The financial compensations paid to control-lers had moved beyond socially acceptable lev-els. CANSO Benchmarking has clearly identified the position relative to our industry norms. Avia-tion is simply a part of the every day infrastruc-ture of society, no more or less important than any other critical service, road, rail, healthcare and so on. Remunerations should reflect the responsibilities of equivalent professions in any given location. In Spain the controllers’ compen-sations (salaries, pensions & working hours) have not been socially aligned for some time.
Ph: So CANSO supported the Spanish ANSP (AENA) in asking for this Royal decree?G: We were in a difficult position. For the ob-server, making a comment is easy: no conse-quences. Taking a decision has consequences, and we were obliged to take a decision in that case. In the current Economic crisis, (Spain is one of several European states with very serious fi-nancial challenges) AENA could not continue to spend money as it did before or it will would have been driven into insolvency, and hence run the risk of losing its operating license. The Government was obliged to step in, and they chose the Royal decree to address and solve the situation. The situation was far from ideal for all concerned, but yes, as CANSO we welcome the fact that the stalemate is now resolved and a way forward towards regionally harmonized operation has been found.
Ph: What do you consider your biggest challenge in the coming years?G: My job is to take CANSO to the next level. This means agreeing a direction, identifying suitable funding sources, building an appropri-ate organization and delivering on objectives. CANSO needs to be relevant and useful to its members and to the industry at large. These tasks are already a significant challenge, but for me anyway, stimulating. We already know that
Philippe: You have since last December been appointed CANSO DG, this is a very impor-tant position, what is your background?Graham: I grew up in ATC. I was first a controller with NATS in the UK. Based at London Centre (LATCC) for several years, then to Jersey (TWR/APP) before joining IAL and several more years in TWR/APP, before moving into the interna-tional ATC environment as a technical adviser. At SITA, I was specializing in ATC datalink which took me into many airlines, but also to ICAO/ Eurocontrol and data link implementation across the world. After ten years of global coordina-tion, I joined ARINC Executive management in the US, responsible for aviation service manage-ment. This taught me a lot about how real busi-ness works and how tough decisions sometimes need to be made. Finally I was appointed to a board level role with an ATC Simulation com-pany. I am thrilled to now have the task of lead-ing CANSO where I have the chance to apply my experience to help transform our industry in these challenging times.
Ph: Your first weeks as DG and already a cri-sis with Spain. Why did CANSO issue a Press release welcoming the Royal decree?G: I am not sure that your readers will be familiar with the story. Nevertheless, what was happen-ing in Spain is just one example of extremes that have developed over many years and have been an unfortunate feature of our profession around the world. Like any other industry the ATM com-munity needs to see an acceptable and consist-ent norm for operating standards and costs. Sometimes compromises are needed in working practices between employers and employees. In Spain this compromise process had failed to produce acceptable results for either side. This failure had serious legal consequences which led to the Decree you mentioned. The role for CANSO is to help normalize any extremes that exist in our industry, wherever and whatever they may be. Safety and Operations are also ex-amples where CANSO works hard to assist de-velopment and implementation of best practice. CANSO accordingly welcomes the progress in Spain. We must recognize that if we allow high cost, or other extremes that also exist in some other parts of Europe to flourish, we risk an in-
get everyone in line. So give us some more time and we’ll get there maybe later than ini-tially planned- but we’ll get there.
Ph: Do you have a message for the controllers?Ky: We need to have the controllers in-volved. The tools we propose will need to be validated by the controllers before they are implemented. Help us do this! ^
dent is here today with us. But we just started with this OPS Committee and first we need to work out the priorities that are actually deliverable in the short to medium term and then the resources from amongst our col-leagues in the industry to deliver. Our first meeting now has a good understanding of the priorities and the job is now to consider what resources are needed. ^
4 CANSO OPS Conference
THE CONTROLLER34
^ by Philippe Domogala, Editor
by Philippe Domogala, Editor
Philippe: Many controllers are becoming impatient with SESAR. They were expecting changes by now. Why does it take so long?Patrick Ky: It is a huge pro-gramme. It took 3 years to establish the foundations and now we have 300 projects run-ning. Some of the changes are revolutionary, not just techni-
Philippe: What will be in your eyes the main challenge for ATM in the next 5 years?Greg Russell: Unfortunately many of the same people at ATC Global are talking about the same issues that they did last year and action is frus-tratingly slow. We need a big idea – a ’game changer’. In my view we need to focus on how
cally, but also culturally. Initially many saw SESAR as just another R&D program. It is not. It is an implementation programme. We will no longer test new functions in a simulated environment in 14 or 15 countries. We will now only test in 2 or maximum 3 environ-ments and industry will get a maximum of 2 prototypes for each tool. There will be no more duplication. So you see, all this impli-cates a total change of mindset of the play-ers. There are frustrations, as it takes time to
technology can really change the way we fa-cilitate the global airways system but we also need the political will to change as well. We need a truly collaborative approach with all parts of the aviation service delivery chain. These are the challenges and CANSO is an important part of the solution.
Ph: Will IFATCA be invited to be part or even member of your Operational committee?GR: You are already here! Marc, your Presi-
CANSOGreg Russell, Executive OPS Committee Champion and CEO Airservices Australia
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SESARPatrick Ky, Executive Director SESAR Joint Undertaking
Charlie’s Column
35 THE CONTROLLER
by Philippe Domogala, Editor
by Philippe Domogala, Editor
Charlie’s ColumnThe Dublin Lawnmower
Pilots and coffee
CANSOGreg Russell, Executive OPS Committee Champion and CEO Airservices Australia
The KLM Coffee Approach KLM is going in the coming months to ask some of its pilots to serve coffee and tea to passengers. With the current economic cri-sis, the airline has to suppress some flights and has found itself with a pilot surplus. In-stead of having them sit at home or laying them off, they proposed to employ them as flight attendants. Surprisingly both the pilots union and the cabin crew union are reportedly enthusiastically supporting the initiative.
In my centre, there are a number of con-trollers training to become pilots on their days off.
Since part of the training now appears to in-clude flight attendant duties, we have told those guys that in order to save training time they could do this OJT part with us. As you can see on the photo, it works! ^
Ryanair SolutionIn order to save money the low cost airline Ryanair decided some time ago already that it will no longer provide complemen-tary coffee to its pilots during flights. They are allowed to buy coffee at the normal price from the flight attendants. As a re-sult, many pilots have started bringing flasks of coffee along to the cockpit. The airline also announced that it is investigat-ing whether the on-board toilets can bring in some more money by making them coin operated: say 1 euro or pound for a maximum 3 min use. It’s not clear whether this will also apply to the cockpit crew, but knowing Ryanair if probably will. As coffee is well known for its diuretic (that’s water expelling to you and me) properties, it’ll be interesting to see how long it will be before pilots start bringing their own bot-tles to relieve themselves of the coffee. Don’t mix up the bottles guys…
portable radios to keep in touch with the main vehicle. When the tower told them of the incoming B757, the main vehicle asked all other vehicles to terminate the job, vacate the runway and return to base. The driver of our lawnmower assumed that the poor visibility was the sole reason for the termination of his work and that therefore, it was safe to use the runway route back to its home base. He stated that he assumed the runway lights were switched on because electricians were testing it.
Furthermore, he didn’t vacate the runway because he was “uncomfortable with tak-ing his vehicle across the soft grassy area”. In the driver training, the Dublin Airport Authority advised all drivers to drive along the centerline of runways and taxiways. Fortunately that day the driver did not fol-low that advise. The driver declared he was unaware of any specific written procedures regarding grass cutting anyway. The Inves-tigation board considered that the use of centerline is not good practice.
Following this incident the Dublin Air-port Authority immediately withdrew the small ride-on mower and replaced it with a larger unit, equipped with a cab, a flash-ing beacon, and airfield radio capable of operating on the TWR frequency and a transponder”
The report does not mention whether they were going to give this large tractor to the same driver. ^
The following is an extract of an actual Se-rious Incident Report, recently published by the Irish Accident Investigation Unit (AAIU nr. 2010-002 ). The full report can be downloaded from Internet.
On 29 May 2009 a Boeing 757 with over 200 passengers on board landed in Dublin in poor visibility conditions. During the roll out on the runway, it passed over a small ride-on lawnmower which was travelling along the runway, right of centerline. The starboard wing of the aircraft passed over the grass mower.
Extract of the pilots/TWR communications: Pilot: “I could have sworn I saw a man riding a lawnmower on the runway …looked like a guy just riding a lone tractor lawnmower”Controller: “I don’t believe it! They guaran-teed me they were clear of the runway”
There was some grass cutting activity in-volving 4 vehicles. Only one of them was equipped with a VHF radio and in contact with TWR. The 3 others had hand held
4 No one lost their head in the incident. The photo was cropped to protect the identity of the driver! Photo credit: AAIU
4 On-the-Job Coffee! Photo credit: BM
SESARPatrick Ky, Executive Director SESAR Joint Undertaking
