Soaring air traffic is challenge for aviation industry; greater multilateral cooperation needed: ICAO ANC
Derryn Wong
THE global aviation recovery is throwing up short-term challenges in the form of passenger service quality, reliability, and recruitment difficulties, said a senior official for the International Civil Aviation Organization Air Navigation Commission (ICAO ANC).
Padhraic Kelleher, president of ICAO ANC, said air traffic is nearing pre-Covid levels. This has led to soaring ticket prices for the summer travel season, as well as shortages of aircraft and staff.
Airports and support industries have also struggled with staffing shortages, and disagreements have ensued, including debates on airport landing fees.
Multilateral cooperation among all involved is, therefore, crucial to realising South-east Asia’s long-term growth, said Kelleher in a media interview hosted by the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) at the Singapore Air Traffic Control Centre on Wednesday (Jun 28).
At all stages, aviation operations typically involve multiple entities ranging from airport operators to aviation authorities, at both domestic and international levels.
The ICAO, as a United Nations agency, helps to develop and implement aviation standards for its 193 member states.
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“The dominant issue pre-Covid was: How can we make sure that we continue to grow the system in a safe and sustainable way? Now, we’re (also) trying to build a system that is back at full capacity and resilient for the future,” he said.
Kelleher was in Singapore on a three-day visit as part of the ICAO ANC’s 15-man delegation undergoing a familiarisation programme for developments in civil aviation in ICAO member states.
As part of the visit, CAAS shared plans on Singapore’s efforts to improve its capabilities as a regional air hub. These plans include the development of next-generation air navigation services and new air traffic management (ATM) concepts.
Kelleher said that Singapore is in a unique position to be a key player and focal point for the region, and could facilitate the “enormous growth” of air traffic expected in future; but ramping up multilateral cooperation would be crucial.
“It’s evident that Singapore has a very unified view about what the future of aviation looks like,” he noted. “You need somebody to start, to create a vision and momentum. But it can’t fall to one state at a regional level.”
He described aviation as “hugely interconnected” since it requires many different entities to collaborate and cooperate to succeed.
Kelleher raised the example of trajectory-based operations (TBO) as an example of an improvement requiring not just a technology change, but also increased collaboration among stakeholders.
CAAS recently trialled the system in cooperation with Japan, Thailand and the United States, involving a Boeing 787-10 ecoDemonstrator Explorer aircraft that flew from Seattle to Tokyo and Singapore to Bangkok.
TBO tracks aircraft in four dimensions – latitude, longitude, altitude and time – with the data shared across all ATM entities along an aircraft’s route. Airbus estimates that it is around 30 per cent to 40 per cent more accurate than extant methods of ATM, and will allow safe management of more aircraft in the same airspace.
TBO does, however, require a greater amount of potentially sensitive data to be shared, in real time, across countries. It also requires higher standards of information transmission and security.
Kelleher described the planned implementation of the system as a “finely-tuned balancing act” requiring many conversations and many agreements, but one that Singapore could help facilitate.
“(The system) is very much the way of the future, and it’s a vision I see Singapore sharing and working regionally to try and make real,” he added.
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