AIR TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT Irish Authority Evolves text messages rather than by voice. a SESAR (Single Europe- The Irish Aviation As of March, according to the Sin- an Sky ATM Research) Authority’s Shannon Area as Europe’s ‘Gateway’ gle European Sky ATM Research project will be relocated Control Center near (SESAR) Deployment Manager, 16 to the Shannon ACC. Con- Shannon Airport manages states complied with ground-network trollers there eventually THE SHANNON AREA CONTROL CENTER IS THE INTERFACE air traffic in Irish airspace > requirements of the European Com- will manage movements at reaching into the North mission’s Data Link Services mandate, Shannon Airport, which Atlantic Ocean. > FREE-ROUTE AIRSPACE AND DATA LINK ARE INTRODUCED which air navigation service providers handled 1.86 million pas- (ANSP) were required to meet by Feb- sengers and 25,556 takeoffs ing ANSPs Nav Canada, Bill Carey Ballygirreen, Ireland ruary 2018. and landings last year. Naviair and Italy’s Enav Described as a commercial semi- In 2006, the IAA was a as well as Iridium Com- time line from the past to the and southern oceanic transition areas. state company, the IAA generates most founding member of the Co- munications. UK NATS future runs through the Irish Airspace sections the ACC manages of its revenue by charging airspace us- operation between Air Nav- joined the company in ers for air traffic control (ATC) services A Aviation Authority’s (IAA) serve as the interface between North igation Service Providers BILL CAREY/AW&ST May 2018. North Atlantic Communications Cen- Atlantic oceanic and European domes- and receives no government funding. (Coopans) Alliance, with The IAA will operate ter at Ballygirreen, a townland on the tic air traffic, and the center handles In addition to embracing air traffic Sweden’s LFV and Denmark’s Naviair. OCA, which covers 5.4 million km2, Aireon’s Aircraft Locating and Emer- Shannon Estuary in western Ireland. most transoceanic flights. In 2018, the management (ATM) innovation, it is Austria’s Austro Control joined in 2010 with 150,000 annual movements. gency Response Tracking (ALERT) Originally known as Shannon Aera- IAA handled 1.1 million total move- modernizing facilities across Ireland. and Croatia’s Croatia Control in 2011. Isavia and the IAA initiated joint service, providing users with the last dio, the station dates to 1936, when a ments, consisting of 505,397 North At- This year, the authority expects to The purpose of the Coopans Alli- operations in 2007 by sharing a com- known position of any ADS-B-equipped transmitter hut, a receiver hut and a lantic communications flights, 345,403 complete construction of a new ATC ance was to standardize the partners’ mon operating system. The project aircraft in distress. Aireon announced short-wave radio direction-finding hut en route flights that did not land in Ire- tower at Dublin Airport, which han- air traffic management systems on a was expanded in 2015 with the intro- that it would offer the service free to were built to provide communications land and 301,195 terminal movements dled a record 31.5 million passengers single platform—Thales’ TopSky—to duction of virtual joint-center opera- registered airlines, ANSPs, regulatory by Morse code with flying boats cross- at Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports. and 233,000 aircraft movements in benefit from common software and tions, allowing the ANSPs to operate agencies and search-and-rescue orga- ing the North Atlantic Ocean between “We are the gateway for Europe,” 2018, making it Europe’s 16th-busiest synchronized upgrades. “The idea is independently of each other or joint- nizations in September 2014, after the Ireland and Newfoundland, Canada. says Sean Patrick, Shannon ACC en airport. to develop once and deploy five times,” ly using the internet protocol-based loss of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a The experimental flying-boat trials route and North Atlantic communica- Standing at 285 ft. (86.9 m) tall, the explains Patrick. In September, the Rohde & Schwarz VCS-4G Voice Com- Boeing 777-200 that disappeared earli- were “a complete success,” paving tions general manager. tower will support parallel runway op- alliance accepted Nav Portugal as its munications System for HF, VHF and er that year in the Indian Ocean. the way for the future of transatlan- “We’re taking all this traffic coming erations by 2021, whenNorth the Dublin Air -Atlanticsixth member.En Route Air Trafficsatellite voice communications at their Preregistration for the service began tic aviation, reads a signpost in front off the North Atlantic and then start- last August; as of March, Aireon count- of the station. ing to sequence it, starting to put ra- North Atlantic ed 143 registrants. The present building, opened in 1952, dar separations in place, starting to Aireon ALERT services will be pro- accommodates 50 radio officers and feed traffic into the London TMA (ter- En Route Air Traffic vided by the watch manager at Bally- engineers who provide high-frequen- minal maneuvering area) at Heathrow, girreen, who will have access to a ter- cy (HF) radio communications for the and we’ve got overflights going into minal with constantly archived position 500,000 flights that transit the ocean- continental Europe,” he explains. “Our data from Aireon’s surveillance system. ic airspace each year. Under an agree- role is hugely significant in terms of On request by telephone, the manager ment the UK and Irish governments the North Atlantic.” will provide a 4D report, including the reached in 1966 to avoid duplication of The IAA implemented Free Route latitude, longitude, altitude and time services, UK controllers in Prestwick, Airspace (FRA) above 24,500 ft. in the of an aircraft’s last-known position, Scotland, provide air traffic control and Shannon FIR upper airspace and oce- based on its flight identification code radio officers at Ballygirreen communi- anic transition areas in 2009; it extend- or International Civil Aviation Organi- cations for aircraft transiting the east- ed FRA into the Shannon FIR’s lower zation (ICAO) 24-bit address, a unique ern half of the North Atlantic Ocean in airspace to 7,500 ft. in October 2017. identifier for the aircraft’s transponder. the Shanwick oceanic control area—a The concept allows operators to flight- The IAA will follow up with a compre- volume of airspace named from a port- plan the most direct routes between hensive report covering the last 15 min. manteau of Shannon and Prestwick. published waypoints or radio naviga- of the flight by email. The joint service agreement be- tion aids within the airspace. Outside With Europe’s June 7, 2020, mandate tween the UK and Ireland most recent- of Dublin’s airspace and some low-level requiring aircraft operators to equip ly was updated in 2004. routes the military uses, there is no for ADS-B “Out” position reporting A newer wing at the station was fixed route structure in Irish airspace. soon approaching, the IAA plans to being readied in March to house a “You file an entry point and an exit Irish-controlled airspace, managed from apply space-based ADS-B for surveil- contingency en route operations cen- point. You’re going in a straight line— Shannon Area Control Center, acts as a lance in its domestic airspace. It also ter that can replicate the majority of the most efficient form of airspace. To gateway between Europe and North America. has installed a number of terrestrial services provided by the IAA’s Shan- facilitate that, we break all this airspace ADS-B stations. non Area Control Center (ACC) at down into [sectors] to make sure we IAA “What it will do for us is it will help Ballycasey in the event of an outage or can maximize efficiency. And we have port Authority (DAA) introduces a new The Shanwick OCA in which the respective centers in Gufunes, Iceland, us at the peripheries of our airspace, emergency. The ACC near Shannon full CPDLC,” Patrick says, using the North Runway situated 1.6 km north IAA provides communications cov- and Ballygirreen. where we are at the limits of our classic Airport manages a flight information acronym for controller-pilot data link of its current main runway. The latter ers 2.2 million km2 (850,000 mi.2) in Adoption of the Aireon space- [radar] surveillance coverage [of] 250 region (FIR) covering Ireland and the communications. runway “is effectively full at peak times the eastern half of the North Atlantic based automatic dependent surveil- mi.,” says Patrick. “We’ll start using it Atlantic Ocean to 15 deg. W. Long.—the The authority deployed CPDLC in every day” following a 45% increase in Ocean and handles more than 500,000 lance-broadcast (ADS-B) system is the in a fill-in role, augmenting radar in range to which it can track aircraft by the Shannon FIR above 16,000 ft. be- passengers since 2014, says the DAA. aircraft movements each year. Iceland’s IAA’s latest technology advance. The relation to how we operate. It will also terrestrial radar and communicate by tween 2012-14, enabling controllers at A remote tower center facility that Isavia, through Iceland Radio, provides authority became an equity partner in give us an increased level of resilience VHF radio—and adjacent northern the Shannon ACC to communicate by Saab installed at Dublin Airport under services in the northern Reykjavik the Aireon joint venture in 2014, join- in terms of radar failures.” 24 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/APRIL 22-MAY 5, 2019 AviationWeek.com/awst AviationWeek.com/awst AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/APRIL 22-MAY 5, 2019 25.