Best Practice: Managing Santa Flight in the UK

Transcription

1 Best Practice: Managing Santa Flight in the UK This best practice describes UK s approach to airspace management to optimize flights between the UK and Finland during the Winter season. a. Previous situation with identified problems to resolve. There are close to a thousand flights between the UK and Lapland over the Christmas period as children are taken to see Father Christmas. The flight time is around two and half hours and many of the trips are day trips. Key Issues regarding coordination of santa flights: Access to North Sea CDRs: AOs expressed strong desire to have greater access to the CDRs in Danger Area EGD613C in the North Sea to reduce the total route mileage. Communications problems: Both internally within NATS but also between CFMU and the AOs. This resulted in confusion over which routes to use. Briefing documentation: Dedicated Instructions for FMP, ATC and Flight Planning staff were not produced. Routing scheme: Information on the preferred routes to be used was not freely available to the AO community. Flight planning issues: Several AOs experienced flight planning issues. FMP and CFMU Staff were not adequately briefed to deal with some of these issues. b. Trigger event to tackle problem. For the last years UK FMP has taken part in the planning process for the handling of flights from the UK to Lapland through the winter season. Demand on this Axis has risen sharply over recent years, resulting in a peak of 114 sectors being operated from UK to EF** destinations on the peak day of winter Although there have been few ATC sector capacity issues, the 2006 season flagged up routing and flight planning issues. In addition, the key message from the Airline Operators was that they wanted to be able to flight plan (and fuel plan) on the shortest possible routes. c. Initial approach to tackle problem. Together with EUROCONTROL and ATC providers across Europe, NATS looked at developing more direct routes for aircraft leaving the UK to fly to Lapland. A key part involved liaising with the Ministry of Defence and the joint Civil Military Airspace Management Cell to allow more aircraft to enter Managed

2 Danger Areas. These areas, operated by the MoD, are used for training exercises by military jets. d. Method followed. February: Wash-up meeting for previous season at CFMU (1/2 day) April: Internal NATS meeting involving UK FMP, LACC, MACC and ScACC (1/2 day) May: Meeting with representatives from UK units and Norway to discuss routing scheme and interface between UK and Norwegian airspace. June: Preparatory meeting (econference) hosted by CFMU. (1 hour) September: Final planning meeting at CFMU. (1/2 day) November: econference for the commencement of the Lapland Season. February: Wash-up meeting for previous season. Keyplayers are: UK FMP; London Area Control ATC Procedures; NATS Flight Planning Section; Scottish ACC ATC Ops; Manchester ACC ATC Ops; UK AMC; MABCC

3 Solutions to problems identified: Access to North Sea CDRs: UK FMP approached the Military Airspace Manager (MAM) at the UK Airspace Management Cell (AMC) to request enhanced access for Civil AOs to CDRs UM82 from local and UM82/UM89 from 2000 onwards Wednesday to Friday. This request was duly considered and resulted in greater availability of the CDRs. LAPLAND AXIS - DECEMBER 2007 D 613 C ACTIVATIONS (INCLUDING BUFFERS) 1ST DECEMBER ST DECEMBER 2007 EASTBOUND FLIGHTS ACCESSING D613C 6,30 = PERIOD OF AVAILABILITY REQUESTED FOR GAT USE = PERIOD REQUESTED FOR GAT USE 10, = PERIODS OF DANGER AREA ACTIVITY , = PERIOD REQUESTED FOR GAT USE = PERIOD OF AVAILABILITY REQUESTED FOR GAT USE ,30 WESTBOUND FLIGHTS ACCESSING D613C Communications problems: Greater levels of communication were carried out between NATS ACCs, CFMU and other stakeholders in the Lapland Axis. This communication was a significant improvement in both quantity and detailed discussion over previous Lapland seasons. Contacts were established between UK FMP and all the major Lapland AOs. Briefing documentation: Documentation for LAC, MACC, ScACC and UK FMP was produced well in advance and circulated to all interested parties. Work on CFMU documentation was started and continuously revised until the start of the season. Routing scheme: A comprehensive routing scheme was developed to for the benefit of the Lapland AOs. This enable any operator to view the preferred ATC routing from all major UK airfields to the five destination airfields in

4 Finland. The routing tables and interactive maps were made available on the CFMU website and were publicised to the AOs via the NATS Pretactical Brief and also via the NATS Customer website. This was a significant improvement over the information available to AOs. Flight planning issues: All the individual Flight Planning issues are examined and resolved with the ACCs concerned. Any changes required are incorporated into the routing tables. e. Expected benefits to users. Initial analysis shows the following results:

5 - % of flights that used North Sea CDRs through EGD613C: ± 32% - % of flights that could not use the CDRs due to EGD613C activity: ± 4% - % of flights that could have used the CDRs but failed to do so: ± 4% - Miles saved per flight (outbound from UK): 20 - Miles saved per flight (inbound to UK): 28 - Total mileage saved by using CDRs: Total estimated fuel saving by using CDRs: 67,460 kg - Total estimated CO 2 emission reduction: 215,429 kg - % CO 2 emission reduction: ± 5% for all aircraft types f. Overall assessment The most significant performance improvement has clearly been the saving passed on to the Airline Operators by enabling them to submit their initial Flight Plan on shorter routes. Although previously some A/C were able to use CDRs, that was done on an ad-hoc basis. The development of a clear Routing Scheme agreed in advance by all the major stakeholders has shown tangible benefits. Feedback from AOs received by NATS has been very positive with virtually no flight planning issues reported. In terms of capacity, there were a small number of days where UK en-route regulations had an impact of the Lapland Axis flights. The regulations (predominantly CLN S12) tended to be short-lived and result in low delays per flight. To achieve the gains that have been seen has required an enhanced level of communication and co-ordination between many of the players involved in planning the Lapland Axis. Involving and consulting the AOs at all stages has kept them informed of developments. The graphical nature of the information displayed by CFMU on their website has been a significant improvement over previous seasons. From the UK perspective, one of the key areas of development has been the ability for UK FMP to make a request to the MoD for enhanced Civil access to the CDRs in EGD613C. This request was passed to the AMC and the MABCC for consideration when planning MDA bookings. As a result of this work, out of 388 flights that routed across the North Sea, only 36 flights (9.3%) were actually affected by activity in EGD613C. The enhanced planning, co-ordination and communication involved in the Lapland Axis has demonstrated that significant system performance improvements are possible when ANSPs, the Airline community and other agencies such as the UK MoD work together. In particular, this work should

6 be seen as an example of how NATS can make progress towards its goal of reducing ATM CO 2 emissions. g. Contact details for more information Paddy Reynolds AMC Operational Planner paddy.reynolds@nats.co.uk Paul Turner Pre Tactical Planner UK FMP paul.turner@nats.co.uk