4 Asia/Pacific Laos to the east. The airspace itself is divided into 4 sectors: sector I controlling the northern Burmese territory, sector II and III controlling the southern Burmese territory and sector IV controlling the oceanic traffic above the Andaman Sea. Sector II and III are normally manned by one controller during quiet hours. Their air traffic management system is designed by French company Thales. It combines paper strips with a mouse-based interface.

4 Where most centres ban smart phones, Yangon ACC has banned shoes...

spacing can be reduced to 5 Nm at busy time of the day with the aid of the reference radar. As in other places ground control is partially blocked by the terminal building and uses CCTV to get a complete view of the apron. Area Control The area control centre is located besides the tower. They have Kolkata (Calcutta, India) airspace neighbouring to the west, Kunming (Yannan province, China) to the north, Bangkok (Thailand) and

In addition to the ATC service provided, they also use HF to provide non-radar flight information service. While their main air traffic management system had ACC coordination functionality, they switched to using IDD instead for better reliability. The airport and airspace is shared with military operations, which can present some major challenges to the controllers. And last but not least, Yangon controllers are required to take off their shoes before entering the operations room! ^ mike.oneill@ifatca.org

4 The former VIP terminal at

Yangon airport will act as a connector between the new terminals 1 & 2 Photo: c Michael Coghlan via Flickr

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