Published Articles
A-CDM in Europe: Is the Ball Rolling?
In the course of one month, the ECAC zone could add 3 more Airport Collaborative Decision Making airports to its list of 12 in 2014. Latest to join was London Gatwick Airport on November 7th, and early October we welcomed Milano Malpensa Airport as Italy's second, and Stuttgart Airport as Germany's 5th addition already. Benefiting from lessons learned and thanks to German A-CDM procedure harmonization, Stuttgart pulled its project off in just over one year.It looks like we are eventually picking up the required implementation pace. Can we do better?
Incheon Airport South Korea Evaluates European A-CDM
Being an advocate of best practices to implement airport collaborative decision making implies agenda flexibility, and investing ample time to allow A-CDM candidates to grasp the concept of A-CDM as it is practiced in live operations. Be it after business hours for a small party of Romanian air traffic control, on their way back to Bucharest, or for the complete stakeholder group of Stockholm Arlanda airport on a one-day visit, or for a delegation of Single European Sky experts of the European Commission's Directorate General Move - Mobility & Transport.A couple of weeks ago, we had the honour to host a team of 5 from South Korea's Incheon International Airport, on a European A-CDM familiarization trip. ICN/RKSI, South Korea's main airport and among Asia's biggest 6, seems to be securing the 'World's best airport' award by Airports Council International year after year, and is now seriously considering efficiency and capacity optimizing measures by adopting the European airport stakeholder collaboration model. Project horizon is mid 2017, running along yet another dazzling construction project.
A-CDM at Brussels Airport: Roadmap to Implementation
We need to go way back into time...back to 2000, when A-CDM entered the scene here while the whole project was still pretty much in its conceptional phase. Of course, the fact that the airport is only a 10' drive away from the place where Airport Collaborative Decision making was conceived (Eurocontrol, that is), may have facilitated the decision for initial project set-up.
But it were the big network expansion plans of Belgium's national carrier Sabena that formed the trigger to tackle future airport infrastructure capacity restrictions by means of a daring new concept of sharing turn-around progress data among airport stakeholders and the Network Manager.
A-CDM Implementation at Brussels Airport: Introducing the Partners Involved
In the last 2 episodes, we discovered the 6 concept elements of Airport Collaborative Decision Making as defined by Eurocontrol, that form the European A-CDM implementation trajectory. Let’s now take a closer look at how an airport actually went about implementing those 6 corner stones. But first things first; let me introduce you to our A-CDM partners.
Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM) Concept Elements: Setting Milestones
In this episode, we’ll take a closer look at the project implementation steps every European airport that takes itself and Collaborative Decision Making seriously, implements according to the Eurocontrol A-CDM Implementation Manual , before being declared as an A-CDM airport. I’m deliberately using the word ‘declared’ here, as there is no real certification process involved; sharing airport data by means of departure planning information messages suffices for Eurocontrol to have your airport designator code added to the slowly expanding list of A-CDM practitioners.
Airport Collaborative Decision Making in Europe
Imagine yourself sitting at the gate, waiting to embark your flight. You’re early, and you see the aircraft arriving at the stand. It barely came to halt when different rolling stock and teams aim for the aircraft doors, almost in perfect unison. Almost, because those different vehicles and teams often belong to different aircraft handling companies and most of the time, airport players operate in ‘perfect isolation’, not necessarily taking the needs or restraints of the other into consideration.