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| Photo: Thales |
[Avionics Today 09-14-2016] The North China Air Traffic Management Bureau of the Civil Aviation Administration of China is automating the terminal maneuvering area, area control, and operations at Beijing Capital International Airport and the new Beijing Daxing International Airport through a contract with Thales and Beijing EasySky Technology (BEST). BEST is a joint venture between Thales and the Civil Aviation Air Traffic Control Technology & Equipment Development.
The International Air Transportation Association (IATA) is forecasting that air traffic in China will rise by 758 million passengers, on top of its existing 440 million, over the next two decades, bringing the total number of annual passengers to 1.2 billion by 2034. To support this growth, China is embarking on airport construction and efficiency improvements to safely increase the number of flight arrivals and departures. By deploying air traffic automation system Thales TopSky-ATC, China aims to support this effort through integration with the Beijing Area Control Center. The system features redundant capability including complete flight plan fallback processing and flight plan synchronization, as well as multi-sensor processing and alerting to enable consistent operations during any main system outage or maintenance period. Meanwhile, the airports’ and airspace traffic flows will be sequenced and balanced using Maestro, Thales’ fully integrated arrival and departure management system.