Dubai Air Navigation Services (DANS), the air navigation service provider (ANSP) for Dubai’s two international airports, has signed a cooperation agreement with Eurocontrol, an intergovernmental air traffic management organisation made up of 41 member-states from the European region and the European Union.

The agreement, a first of its kind in the GCC, was signed by the CEO of DANS Mohammed Abdulla Ahli and the director general of Eurocontrol Frank Brenner.

The agreement will provide new opportunities for mutual benefit and will also pave the way for collaboration on research and development, exchange of information and provision of support on specific activities between both organisations across various fronts.

One of the first areas for joint activity that will take place under this agreement is to advance the research on the Wake Vortex concepts. Wake has a large role to play in determining how many aircraft can land at an airport in a given time period.

DANS has been experimenting how the wake spacing between successive arrivals - the gap between successive aircraft - can be safely reduced.  One of the wake projects is called Recat, which is designed to re-categorise the existing four wake turbulence categories into six new wake categories.

DANS has been running a campaign to capture wake data for the last 18 months, and now has the database of approximately 160,000 tracks showing wake vortexes behaviour in the Dubai environment.   

The agreement will enable further research on Recat and the sharing with Dans of the safety case developed by Eurocontrol. The agreement will also assist in delivering solutions such as Recat, which is one of the potential solutions to be utilised by Dans to accommodate the escalating increase in capacity at Dubai International Airport.

“This ground-breaking agreement between Eurocontrol and Dans will allow us to jointly make an important contribution to the activities that are underway in International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) to define improved international wake-based separation minima bringing safety and economic benefits to aircraft manufacturers, airlines and airports such as Dubai,” Brenner said.

“As a result of the compelling vision set out by HRH Sheikh Mohamed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum for Dubai, the aviation sector has been experiencing exponential growth and development across various fronts. And in order to continue moving towards further success, Dans has identified in its operational strategy the importance of increasing and maximising the scope of cooperation with international organisations. The deployment of the cooperation agreement between Dans and Eurocontrol marks an important milestone in the history of aviation, that will mutually benefit both organisations,” Ahli said.

“As a step in the right direction, we will be collaborating on the wake vortex project which is of tremendous importance to Dubai considering the massive air traffic increases it is witnessing at both airports. Dans has invited all the national stakeholders in the aviation sector‎‏ to discuss the opportunities of benefiting from this project in the future, regarding the increase of capacity in all the UAE airports,” he said. – TradeArabia News Service