Stronger together: Asia-Pacific ANSPs

With the Asia-Pacific region’s diverse ATM structure managed by multiple air navigation service providers, the need to be prepared for a future of continued growth has seen the launch and implementation of a number of new collaborative initiatives, all designed to improve the safety and efficiency of systems facing considerable demand.

“The region will need to better leverage collaboration among countries and with the private sector to pool expertise, as tripling resources to meet a tripling in demand will be difficult to do,” said the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS), which has been at the heart of numerous collaborations aimed at enhancing safety, improving ATM and supporting innovation.

The implications of sharing data

The latest partnership sees the ANSPs of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand sign a Memorandum of Understanding to establish a regional aviation safety data and information sharing initiative aimed at improving aviation safety as the sector recovers post-pandemic. It should be launched by the end of 2024, with the ANSPs sharing de-identified safety data and safety information to determine safety hazards and trends, and develop mitigating measures to better manage risk. The sharing of safety information will advance the Asia-Pacific Regional Aviation Safety Plan goals to reduce operational risks and enable data-driven regulatory oversight. It will also support the states’ safety management activities and enable the validation of existing safety risks and detection of emerging hazards and risks, as well as facilitating effective and timely intervention.

Each state will supply data from its mandatory reporting systems, covering both domestic and international commercial aviation, based on occurrences reported by airlines, ANSPs and airport operators. The data and information will only be used to advance safety and not for any other purpose.

The partners will initially focus on five safety occurrences – resolution advisories from traffic collision avoidance systems; deviations from air traffic controller-assigned altitude; activations from ground proximity warning systems or terrain awareness and warning systems; severe turbulence; windshear; bird strikes; and dangerous goods incidents. The focus “may be expanded in the future to enable broadened analyses and insights”, CAAS confirmed. The participants will develop a procedural handbook.

“The cross-border nature of aviation demands that we work together,” said Captain Manuel Antonio Tamayo, director-general of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP). “The participating states recognised that taking a collective and coordinated approach, involving the sharing of safety data and safety information among relevant parties, will better ensure timely and effective identification, resolution and management,” added CAAS.

User-preferred routing

Collaboration is also under way on the operational front, including a trial of user-preferred routing (UPR) on 38 scheduled routes involving the ANSPs of Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand and Singapore, and carriers Air New Zealand, Garuda Indonesia, Qantas and Singapore Airlines. The trial was initially scheduled for three months, but in early November, data was still being collected to determine quantifiable benefits. CAAS explained: “The participating ANSPs are in discussion to consider extending the trial for a longer period, as well as expanding the trial to other ANSPs in the Asia-Pacific region.”

During the trial, pilots from the participating airlines on the selected routes were able to choose the most efficient and direct routing, rather than predefined routes, based on weather and traffic conditions, resulting in reduced flight time and carbon emissions. CAAS said, for example, that between Singapore and Melbourne, an airline can potentially save up to 1,700kg of fuel, equating to more than 1,960 tonnes of carbon emissions a year based on daily flights.

The UPR project is part of the South-East Asia – Oceania Implementation of Free Route Operations (FRTO) Project, signed by the ANSPs of Indonesia, New Zealand and Singapore, the Civil Air Navigation Services Organization (CANSO) and International Air Transport Association (IATA) at the Air Navigation World Conference in Singapore in 2023, with Airservices Australia later coming onboard.

FRTO project partners agreed to identify applicable city pairs and flights, and validate the use of FRTO – or UPRs – between defined cities within a year.  They agreed to work together to promote the use of FRTO between city pairs, resulting in more efficient flight trajectories, taking into consideration factors such as weather and airspace closures, thus reducing the distance travelled, flight time, fuel burn, and emissions, as well as improving the efficiency of airspace and enhancing air traffic flow management.

The Pathfinder Project

At the same conference, the ANSPs of China, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and the United States, as well as CANSO and IATA, signed an agreement on the Asia-Pacific Trajectory-Based Operation (TBO) Pathfinder Project, committing to jointly define, develop, and demonstrate TBO for the Asia-Pacific region within four years. The ANSPs of the Republic of Korea and Vietnam subsequently joined the project, while ANSPs from Australia, Hong Kong, China and India will participate as observers.

With Pathfinder, the partners are laying the groundwork for TBO in the region, whereby ANSPs will work together to plan and optimise an aircraft’s entire flight trajectory across flight information regions (FIR), sharing information, including weather, airspace closures, and other traffic constraints. Such collaboration would allow ANSPs to manage air traffic strategically ahead of time, rather than make reactive course corrections, resulting in improved safety and efficiency, reduced delays and disruptions, and lower fuel burn and emissions.

The partners are defining the concept of operations and requirements for TBO in the Asia-Pacific region; developing rules and procedures for the region; and demonstrating processes and technical capabilities developed through laboratory simulations and live flight trials.

A TBO pioneer

Pathfinder is a follow-on to the first-ever multi-regional TBO programme. Involving the ANSPs of Canada, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, and the US, it culminated in a Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner demonstration flight in June 2023.

During the demonstration, the four ANSPs collectively sequenced the aircraft’s routes to achieve the optimal flight path across multiple FIRs. The demonstration started in Seattle with the 787-10 flying to Tokyo, then on to Singapore Changi Airport and Bangkok, before returning to Seattle. During the flights, the ANSPs shared information on weather, airspace closures and traffic, and worked together to plan and optimise the entire flight trajectory across the different FIRs, from take-off to touchdown.

TBO, which ICAO has listed as a strategic objective for future global ATM systems, promises significant benefits, including improving safety and efficiency, minimising delays and disruptions, cutting travel cost and time, and reducing fuel burn and carbon emissions.

The FRTO and Pathfinder are among the first initiatives of the Asia-Pacific ANSP Committee (AAC), established last year to enhance collaboration between ANSPs in the region and accelerate implementation of ICAO’s APAC Seamless ANS Plan.

Meanwhile, ATM developments could also come from the International Centre for Aviation Innovation (ICAI), created by CAAS at the beginning of 2024 to facilitate the development and adoption of technologies for the aviation sector to meet rising demand. “ICAI seeks to work with partners to co-develop and/or test new solutions to advance aviation including ATM,” CAAS explained.

ICAI is working with AIRLab, a collaboration between CAAS and Thales, on the Regional Collaborative Platform (RCP) prototype to trial collaboration among ANSPs by allowing the sharing of flight information and providing common virtual situation awareness. RCP is a cloud-based platform designed to facilitate the collaborative development of capabilities that support seamless ATM in the Asia-Pacific region, according to CAAS.

“As air traffic continues its strong recovery from the pandemic, we must strengthen collaboration to make flying for the public safer, more efficient and sustainable,” said Han Kok Juan, director general of CAAS and chairman of the AAC.

Investing in infrastructure

Such operational collaboration is vital, as is investment, according to CANSO. While there has been extensive investment in physical infrastructure in the region, such as airports, to cope with traffic demand, ATM investment has lagged behind. Aviation growth is not being matched by ATM capacity, the organisation believes.

The region is “fast approaching a critical juncture”, CANSO director general Simon Hocquard told the recent APAC Civil Aviation Ministerial Conference. “ANSPs have to invest in key elements such as replacing out-of-date equipment,” he said. “If we do not invest enough today in this vital infrastructure, we may find ourselves with a significant capacity crunch in the future.”

The Asia-Pacific region is diverse and fragmented and to support growth, it needs a regional ATM architecture that is solutions-driven, values-based and transcends politics, Hocquard stressed.

In conjunction with ATM consultancy THINK Research and following extensive research with Asia-Pacific ANSPs, CANSO published in late 2023 a white paper aimed at modernising the region’s ATM. The paper provides recommendations to accelerate ATM modernisation, including through digitalisation, which allows services to be bought in place of capital equipment, enabling the sharing of expertise and economies of scale. CANSO also recommends virtualisation, pointing for example to air traffic flow management (ATFM), which is currently performed in the region in a decentralised manner, with optimisation performed locally, not regionally. If the regional network manager is an independent third-party vendor providing ATFM as a service, there would be fewer boundaries and more potential for collaboration, suggests CANSO.

At the October 2023 Asia-Pacific Cross-Border Multi-Nodal ATFM Collaboration (AMNAC) meeting, CANSO proposed a next-generation ATFM for the region. The group agreed to evolve it.

But industry can only do so much, with high-level policy also essential. Government intervention can accelerate ATM modernisation and deliver strong societal benefits, Hocquard told the conference. He said: “Regional ATM requires policy innovation, in addition to technical enhancement. Policy innovation requires a vision of the desired end state, awareness of the options, and the gumption to act.”