DSNA’s program honoured by the IHS Jane’s ATC Awards

The Collaborative Advanced Planning initiative improving Flight Efficiency through a CDM gate-to-gate Approach was the winner in the Environment category of the IHS Jane’s ATC Awards at the World ATM Congress in Madrid on 7 March 2016. Nominations are assessed by a panel of experienced judges.

The Collaborative Advanced Planning

When traffic demand exceeds control sectors capacities by more than 50%, usual traffic regulation measures lead to strong flights’ penalization, inconsistencies in the traffic demand prediction and loss of trust between Air Traffic Management stakeholders. DSNA, the French Air Navigation Service Provider, has developed an innovative collaborative en-route process, known as the Collaborative Advanced Planning (CAP). Alongside with aircraft operators, the objective is to find the best solutions in order to alleviate traffic hotspots in identified ATC sectors while taking into account AO’s constraints and preferences. This process allows to minimize the implementation of traffic flow regulations.

This collaborative process is supported by a web-based B2B portal: dsna.fr, providing:

– real time interaction possibilities between airlines’ operations and first line actors at en-route centres (ACCs)

– real-time operational data

– the information process stage

Live Trial

The CAP strengthens common situation awareness of the French network and offers quick-win solutions for daily operations.

From July 7th to September 13th, 2015, 628 CAPed flights coming from East and South-East Europe to the UK contributed to save 12,300 minutes of ATFCM delay. The project partners were : 3 ACCs (Aix-en-Provence, Paris, Reims), 5 airlines OCCs (British Airways, easyJet, Ryanair, KLM and Thomas Cook) and the Network Manager (Eurocontrol).

Maurice Georges, DSNA CEO, said:

“I’m really pleased with this initiative, showing that DSNA and its customers can work closely and efficiently through innovative and collaborative ATFCM methods. During the live trial in summer 2015, CAP led to more than 50% reduction of morning delays while traffic increased by 7%.”

Other Aircraft Operators have spontaneously candidated to become

 and neighbouring ACCs are also interested in this innovative collaborative process.