European Commission to fund inception and development of Centralised Services

The European Commission has announced that it is supporting the Centralised Services (CS) with funding from the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T 2013 Multi-annual Work Programme 2013 in the field of Air Traffic Management (ATM)).

“This is good news for Europe, as advanced technology coming out of the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) Programme will now be supported both in content and financially by the European Commission. These are technologies that will be implemented centrally beyond the borders of the EU and for all of the 41 EUROCONTROL Member States,” said Frank Brenner, Director General of EUROCONTROL. “Following the outcome of the recent ICAO Montreal High Level Safety Conference, it is timely to work intensively on the tracking of aircraft which we do with the European Tracking Service (EKTR) – CS3.”

“The current Datalink deficiencies have resulted in a 5-year delay to implementation of the EC 29/2009 Implementing Rule. As recommended by EASA, it is vital to develop a fully managed implementation of Datalink which we do with the Air/Ground Datalink Infrastructure CS9-1 (DCS/TELE-INFRA) and the Air/Ground Central Datalink Concept services CS9-2 (DCS/CCA-SERVER),” Frank Brenner added.

Following the go-ahead given by the EUROCONTROL Member States in February 2014, EUROCONTROL launched Calls for Interest for 14 of the 18 proposed Centralised Services. Following an overwhelming number of responses, Calls for Tenders have now been launched for CS1 (FAS: Flight Plan and Airport Slot Consistency Service), CS7-2 (NIPS/SUR-RF: 1030/1090 RF bands), CS4 (AFUAS: Advanced Flexible Use of Airspace), CS6-3 (CN/RFF: Radio Frequencies), CS7-3 ((NIPS/SAT-NAV: Satellite navigation), CS6-2 (CNR/MICA: Mode S Interrogator Code Allocation).

“With six Calls for Tenders already launched, the CS Programme is now well underway,” said Herman Baret, CS Programme Manager at EUROCONTROL. “The direct funding from the European Commission will help us to ensure that this development phase will successfully deliver a concept that will contribute to the establishment of CS in Europe and the opening of ATM services to market forces.”