Safety and airspace capacity will be enhanced at one of Europe’s busiest and most complex airspaces, the EUROCONTROL Maastricht Upper Area Control (MUAC) airspace.
EUROCONTROL MUAC, one of the Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) of four EUROCONTROL member states – Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands – has selected Frequentis to provide its controller working position (CWP) as part of the MUAC fallback automation system. To ensure a high airspace capacity during fallback operations while maintaining safety levels, EUROCONTROL's primary CWP will be mirrored by the fallback system, enabling controller requirements to be met in a similar way.
At MUAC, the Fallback-CWP will be connected via the OpenATM SWIM service to the fallback flight data processing (FDP) system. This approach decouples the ATM data service provider (ADSP) part - the fallback-FDPS – from the air traffic service units (ATSUs) – a Single European Sky (SES) requirement, enabling European ANSPs to move to an interoperable, cost-effective, and flexible service provision.
"The fallback solution provided by Frequentis will ensure that we maintain our airspace safety and capacity levels even in emergency situations, and also that we meet Single European Sky principles,” said John Santurbano, director of MUAC.
The Frequentis CWP software builds on the ODS Open Platform development environment, which enables expansion and prototyping by EUROCONTROL. Because the Human-Machine Interface will be similar, operational training efforts will be significantly reduced. Furthermore, the associated toolkit will feature automatic testing and code generation and, therefore, will require less maintenance.
Image: Amsterdam Airport Schiphol
