Few other new aviation systems have generated as much controversy and opposition from the airspace user community as EGNOS, the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service.
Like the US Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), EGNOS enables precision approach procedures to be implemented using only space-based signals. As such, it is one possible future replacement of ILS.
On 1 July 2003, an airspace user position paper signed by AEA, IATA and others stated bluntly:
“Finally, the airspace users would like to recall that they have resisted the development of the European Geostationary Overlay System (EGNOS), which has been mainly developed for political reasons and for which all attempts to build a credible aviation business case have failed. As a consequence, public funds have to be provided to fund the entire EGNOS system (development costs as well operational costs). Reference is made to the AEA, IATA, ERA, IAOPA, IACA joint position paper on the European Commission’s Communication COM(2003)123final) on the Integration of EGNOS into Galileo.”
The above position paper would suggest that had there been a business case, opposition to EGNOS would have been less or non at all. Unfortunately that was not true either. For systems where there was a business case (like air/ground digital link for example), it was promptly refused as unrealistic… Unfortunately, in some cases like Mode S Enhanced Surveillance, this was even true and such cases did not help the other projects where the benefits on the level claimed were actually there.
Opposition or not, the implementation of EGNOS proceeded apace and it is operational now. But an important lesson had been learned by the politicians behind it: the airline community is not a cash-cow who can be told what is good for it and will then pay for the privilege. Again, had the approach been different in the early days, EGNOS would probably not have this blemish on its image.
But what now?
WAAS has been in widespread use in the US for some time now at airports which were not equipped with precision approach aids before. EGNOS will bring the same possibility to Europe now and in time to North Africa and the Middle-East also. Combine WAAS and EGNOS and you get improved positioning accuracy over the North Atlantic, enabling further reduction in separation minima there.
On 12 July 2010, EGNOS received its European certification, clearing the way for service that enables ILS Cat. I-like minima without any ground equipment being available at the given airport. 2 August saw the actual operational introduction for en-route and LNAV approaches with clearance for precision approaches to follow in November 2010.
France is expected to be the first European country to publish approach procedures making use of EGNOS with other countries to follow suite soon.
There are plans for EGNOS to provide value added services also at some point in the future but the timing of those paid services has not yet been determined.
Airspace users do not pay directly for the EGNOS service. However, ESSP (European Satellite Service Provider), the organisation operating EGNOS, has itself been certified as an air navigation service provider. It is in fact a limited liability company, whose shares are owned by 7 European air navigation service providers…
Of course EGNOS is just an enabler and any benefits to airspace users must come from the applications enabled by it. Reduced en-route separation, precision approaches where none existed before, elimination of ILS cost of ownership are but a few examples of the benefits possible. It will be up to Air Navigation Service Providers and airports to ensure that those applications are available… and up to the airspace users to ensure that they use them. In the near future we will know how far the original claims of EGNOS benefits have been true.
EGNOS will also support Galileo, the European satellite navigation system. The bad news? After EGNOS and Mode S Enhanced Surveillance, Galileo is the third most disputed development being faced by the airspace user community.
