Continued from Cover
“In order to successfully select the finalists and, of course, the winners, we needed a panel of judges who know air traffic management inside and out,” ATCA President and CEO Brian Bruckbauer explained to ceremony attendees. In addition to Bruckbauer and CANSO Director General Simon Hocquard, this year’s judges were Sharon Cooke, chief executive officer of Airways International; Farhan Guliyev, director of AZANS; and Don Thoma, chief executive officer of Aireon.
“I can personally attest to the dozens of hours it took to review each and every submission, as well as the very difficult decisions we had to make to select the finalists and winners,” Hocquard said.
Following the Maverick Award announcements, Cooke presented the Collaboration Award, which recognises the importance of relationship building, consensus, and collaboration across disciplines and sectors to achieve a shared goal in the advancement of air traffic management.
ASECNA was honored with the 2021 Collaboration Award for operationalising space-based ADS-B throughout the 16.1 million square kilometers of airspace it oversees across its member states of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Comoros, Congo, Ivory Coast, France, Gabon, Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Chad, and Togo. Accepting the Award was Louis Bakienon, Director of Operations, ASECNA.
"This award you have given to ASECNA is not just for ASECNA, but for all of Africa. You are showing what Africa is doing to improve safety in aviation, and it will allow us to continue the collaboration that we are already seeing since the beginning of ASECNA in 1989."
Thoma then presented this year’s Innovation Award, which recognises new ideas and technological developments that have the potential to significantly advance air traffic management from a performance, capacity, and operational perspective. The Four-Dimensional Trajectories (4DT) Live Flight Demonstration (LFD) Team took home this year’s honors.
A collaboration between the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Boeing, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU), three airlines, and several other partners, the 4DT LFD project was a 16-month cost-shared partnership that leveraged FAA NextGen investments in SWIM, data communications, PBN, FF-ICE, and other technologies, and included novel live flights using 4DT-based operations.
Dr. Chip Meserole of Boeing accepted the award. "We will be pressing forward further in our program with the FAA to take this international. It sets the foundation for operations throughout the world."
Hocquard returned to the stage to present the third and final award of the day, recognizing outstanding achievements in sustainability.
“As we tackle new ways of managing the world’s air traffic, we must also be leaders in protecting the environment,” he said. “Our sustainability award recognises our industry’s work to reduce aviation’s impact on the environment, contributions to conservation, and improving the carbon footprint of the world’s safest mode of transportation.”
The winner of the 2021 award for sustainability was the Frequentis Orthogon Arrival Manager (AMAN) System. First deployed in Zurich in 2001, the System now supports controllers managing arrivals at numerous airports, including London Heathrow, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Oslo, Singapore, and Toronto. Orthogon AMAN has saved more than 1 million tonnes of CO2 emissions globally during 20 years of operations. In accepting the award, Frequentis' Frank Köhne remarked, "This award is dedicated to our customers, to our engineers, and finally, last but not least, to our children."
PAGE 12