Addressed How Future Air Navigation Will Manage Forecast Aviation Growth And Innovations

ICAO Council President Dr. Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu welcomed a wide range of government and industry experts to ICAO Tuesday to kick off the UN agency’s second Global Air Navigation Industry Symposium (GANIS/2).

“As we meet here this week, seeking to renew the air transport network so that it fully meets the social and economic expectations of societies and businesses everywhere, we must acknowledge that it’s time for our air navigation systems and capabilities to take some new steps forward, and well beyond legacy concepts and approaches which have now lost much of their relevance,” he emphasized in opening the week-long activities and exhibition planned.
 
Stressing that the solutions to be considered by the 600-plus experts in attendance must not only accommodate forecast traffic growth, but also fully integrate air and ground systems, including airports, within a single and coordinated flight control infrastructure, Dr. Aliu further highlighted that intermodal transport environments, and the revolution now underway via remotely-piloted and unmanned operational platforms, present new and compelling flight management challenges.
 
“Innovations in these areas are expanding not only traditional operations,” he underscored, “but also business models, and the overall process is accelerating the information-centric transition being enabled by System Wide Information Management (SWIM) and Collaborative Decision Making (CDM). This evolved environment will ultimately enable management by trajectory, and deliver much-needed improvements for mission- and business-critical operations. It will also help us to leverage important enhancements to aviation safety, security, and environmental sustainability, while enabling increasingly autonomous operations and more effective human-machine collaboration.”
 
President Aliu also remarked that aviation’s historically strong degree of global harmonization, achieved through ICAO, as well as a set of agreed and clearly-defined performance-based standards, would be key to how the coming air navigation revolution is managed globally.
 
“ICAO’s Global Air Navigation Plan (GANP) serves to align those standards and performance targets and provides a comprehensive and practical strategic vision for aviation,” he reiterated.
 
Noting the profound socio-economic benefits which derive from the international routes and flights which connect societies and businesses everywhere, President Aliu urged the GANIS participants to think very far beyond aviation’s traditional box. “We’re looking for your creativity and your imagination, but also for your sense of adventure. And that’s because adventure has always been such an important part of the spirit of aviation,” he said.
 
ICAO’s GANIS event has been organized back-to-back this year with a special supporting symposium focused on the safety and implementation challenges which can confront many States and territories when the air transport system adopts new global innovations.  
 
“A key and over-arching aim of the ICAO Global Plans for safety and air navigation is to structure and optimize this modernization through the improved interoperability of systems, harmonized procedures and strengthened regulatory regimes,” President Aliu commented. “Our safety and implementation symposium will therefore help us to explore how these guiding global strategic resources can point us to new implementation strategies which are at once targeted and cost-effective, while ready and able to handle what’s to come.”

(Image provided with ICAO news release)

FMI: www.icao.int