Before the Greener Skies conference even starts, we have some news from the Hong Kong Civil Aviation Department. They have redesigned a piece of the airspace they control in a way that will shave 14 minutes off all flights arriving from Europe, Southern China, the Middle East and South East Asia. They are doing this [...]

No-one will argue with the fact that our industry has too many acronyms and abbreviations. The amount of jargon is high – I even have trouble keeping up with it sometimes. At the recent Aviation & Environment Summit, we made two announcements – one on the implementation of CDA at airports across Europe (that’s continuous [...]

I posted a week or so ago about the third in a series of ‘ASPIRE’ flights that took place across the Pacific Ocean. Following on from demonstrations of the ‘perfect flight’ by Air New Zealand and Qantas, United Airlines performed a flight last Friday using every possible air traffic control and operational efficiency innovation available. [...]

I’ve just got back from the Air Traffic Control Association annual conference in Washington. And what an amazing few days it’s been. To be in the presence of history being made, as America elects its first black President, is an incredible feeling. Yet, for aviation and the environment at least, there is still a sense [...]

An Associated Press report over the weekend highlights some of the benefits that will come when the United States gets its NextGen air traffic control system. This $35 billion project, which is not due to go live until the 2020′s, will save around 3.3 billion gallons of fuel per year. This equates to a reduction [...]

Reduced Separation – now in operation across Africa A little-reported but significant event at the end of September: the implementation of Reduced Vertical Separation Minima (RVSM) in Africa. Now stay with me, because this might sound technical and dull, but it is of immense importance not only to African flight safety, but also to reduced [...]