A short article in Aviation Week and Space Technology caught my eye the other day. “Restructuring U.K. Skies” was the title and it announced that the U.K.’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) was beginning the process of defining airspace out to 2030, with industry-wide dialogue to begin in 2010. I counted the number of times the word “airspace” appeared in the item: six. I also counted the number of times the words trajectory based operations appeared. ZERO.
I think it is fair to assume that the editors of Aviation Week would have used the term “trajectory based operation” if they had seen it in the CAA’s press release or the “Airspace for Tomorrow” guidance document. So, its complete lack can be safely taken for an indication of its absence in the CAA’s material.
The United Kingdom is part of SESAR and experts from NATS have been involved in the writing of the SESAR Concept of Operations. So what gives?
How is it possible that at a time when the SESAR concept and the master plan that is built on it is supposed to be driving ATM developments in Europe, one of the member States of the EU publishes their strategic plans and it is apparently business as usual… tinkering with airspace…again.
Not that there is no need for improving certain aspects of the U.K.’s airspace. Far from it. But a guidance document going out to 2030 should be proclaiming loud
and clear the paradigm changes that the U.K. will implement, including trajectory based operations (TBO), with clever airspace improvements being but a side-show and not the main event.
Of course it is possible that the magazine editors had missed something and TBO is written all over the CAA’s guidance document, in which case I am banging on an open door. I hope I am… but I am afraid I am not.