ACI World Report – December 2012
ACI Scores Major Success at ICAO Air Navigation Conference The Conference , which was held in Montreal from 19 to 30 November, deliberated ICAO’s proposals for the “Aviation System Block Upgrade” (ASBU) approach to creating the future Air Navigation system and a revised draft Global Air Navigation Plan. ACI was represented by Chief Delegate Angela Gittens, Delegates Ali Tounsi (ACI Africa), David Gamper Crag Bradbrook and Michael Rossell, other staff and airport representatives. ACI also had a popular Exhibition Stand showcasing its programmes including APEX, Training, ASQ and Publications. ACI also sponsored a lunch at the conference, and Angela Gittens gave a wellreceived speech on ACI action across the broad sweep of its activities. Staff also held many side-meetings to obtain further support for APEX from States and Civil Aviation Conferences (AFCAC, ECAC, LACAC etc.).
11
will be reported to the Council and taken into account in its policy deliberations. A-CDM The conference adopted ACI’s recommendation stating that ICAO should “work with the Airports Council International (ACI) and other interested parties on guidance material to promote the globally-harmonized implementation of airport collaborative decision-making, including best practices and global technical standards”
A-CDM is an essential approach to obtaining greater efficiency in airport operations, and is covered in the immediate, short term and medium term elements of the block upgrade approach. Block upgrades are suites of measures which work together to produce a systematic improvement in capability – rather The Conference agreed than under the current that airports represent process where one of the three major improvements are Angela Gittens, Director General, ACI World components in an introduced piecemeal integrated approach to to bring about small improving the performance of air transportation, along with incremental changes, and are not globally interoperable. aircraft and air traffic management. As en-route capacity is increased, airports, being the nodes of the air traffic The Conference agreed that A-CDM systems should be network, could be potential choke points if nothing is done interconnected with en-route and regional ATM, and also to address this constraint. Increased runway infrastructure be connected by System Wide Information Management and advances in air navigation and aircraft systems are (SWIM_ to form a broad network that has airports as its fundamental to increasing airport capacity; however, nodes. The approach should extend to include all aspects overall airport surface operations must also be optimized to of landside and passenger terminal operations at airports. improve airport performance. An Airport CDM has been shown to optimise ground operations and extend the reach of CDM, beyond “gate ACI put forward three working papers under the Agenda to gate” optimisation, to what may be called “kerb to kerb” item on Aerodrome Operations – Improving Airport optimisation. Performance, covering: Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM); Performance-based navigation (PBN); The Conference also appreciated that ACI had taken and, the ACI APEX in Safety programme. a strategic decision to promote airport efficiency by For each of them, ACI’s Recommendations were supported encouraging the development of standardized A-CDM at strongly by States and adopted in the Report – this is a airports worldwide, using a set of standard milestones for major success as the Conclusions and Recommendations critical information (e.g. Target Off-Block Time - TOBT).