7th March, 2018
The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) says airspace design and management will be changing dramatically in the years ahead.
The body says this will happen as more and more aircraft enter into service which flies higher, lower, faster, and much slower than those being managed today.
The President of the ICAO Council, Dr Bernard Aliu, made the assertion while speaking at the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation (CANSO) Sixth World Air Traffic Management (ATM) Congress in Madrid, Spain.
A copy of Aliu’s speech was obtained by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Wednesday.
He said today’s incredibly rapid rate of technological progress is forcing an acknowledgement that a revolution is underway.
Aliu said this would be so, “with Unmanned Aircraft Systems navigating residential and urban environments for a wide range of purposes at one end of the spectrum, and high-altitude balloons, Remotely Piloted Aircraft System and super or hypersonic aircraft jetting across the stratosphere at the other”.
Regarding current commercial operations, Aliu stressed ICAO’s prioritisation of the worldwide adoption of Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) approaches.
He said: “ATFM optimises the existing capacities of the air traffic management system through the more precise coordination of take-offs and landings.
“This means aircraft don’t find themselves placed into costly holding patterns when they reach their destinations, and that while in flight they can be more quickly and accurately routed around constrained airspace and unexpected weather events.”
Aliu said the new space-based Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) technology would eventually serve as a truly global aircraft positioning solution.
This, he said, would redefine how seamlessly modern Air Traffic Management functions and deliver important efficiency and emissions-reduction advantages.
“We do not yet have a global ADS-B mandate, however, by 2020 a number of States and regions will be ADS-B capable and many commercial aircraft will be equipped with suitable transponders,” the ICAO council president said.
He further underlined the responsibility of the entire air transport community to ensure that there were sufficient numbers of skilled personnel to manage this increasingly complex technological foundation for 21st-century aviation.
Aliu noted that ICAO’s Global Plans for Aviation Safety and Air Navigation include helpful targets to assist planners and investors looking to optimise their flight capacity and the socio-economic benefits of today’s nascent operations.
“The horizon now before us is one I am convinced we can reach if we continue to work together.
“Certainly, CANSO will be looked to by ICAO to play a key role in how we shape and realise this bold new future together,” he said.