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| Members of the A6 Steering Group meet to sign the revised Memorandum of Cooperation. Photo: A6 Alliance |
[Avionics Today 10-05-2015] The leaders of Europe’s Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs), the A6 Alliance, have renewed their commitment to work together to help modernize Europe’s Air Traffic Management (ATM) system. They have also expanded their agreement to draw in other European ANSP groupings.
The agreement revises the Memorandum of Cooperation signed in 2011 by members of the original A6 Alliance — which united the ANSPs of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK and the Noracon consortium (Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Norway and Sweden) — to enable even greater cooperation to help deliver the Single European Sky ATM Research program (SESAR). The MOC sets out the arrangements under which members will cooperate in areas such as identifying and adopting best practice across members, agreeing common methods of operation, benchmarking performance and optimizing resources.
The agreement now also includes members the COOPANS Alliance — Austria, Croatia, Denmark, Ireland and Sweden — and the B4 consortium — Czech Republic, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia. PANSA, of Poland, has also become a full member of the A6 Alliance.
The revised agreement reflects changes to the external environment, as SESAR Phase 1 nears its conclusion, SESAR 2020 launches and shifts focus towards the operational deployment of technologies. Different groupings will participate in the A6 Alliance for different elements of the SESAR program and the A6 Alliance is part of the supervisory board for the SESAR Deployment Manager.