A-CDM Implementation at Brussels Airport: Introducing the Partners Involved
Past the theory, into practice: Brussels Airport
In the last 2 episodes, we discovered the 6 concept elements of Airport Collaborative Decision Making as defined by Eurocontrol, that form the European A-CDM implementation trajectory. Let’s now take a closer look at how an airport actually went about implementing those 6 corner stones. But first things first; let me introduce you to our A-CDM partners.
Brussels Airport (BRU/EBBR): Overview of A-CDM Stakeholders
Located at the heart of the European Union, and having welcomed 19,3 million passengers in 2013 , Brussels Airport ranks as a an Airports Council International ‘Group 2’ airport. We sport 2 parallel runways, 25/07 oriented to take full advantage of the prevailing westerly winds, and an intersecting one, 01/19, mainly used to spread the arrival and departure patterns and live up to the strict noise abatement procedures in place. Melsbroek (EBMB) is the military air base housing the Belgian Air Force’s 15th Airlift Wing and is located 'next door'; to be taken literally, because their traffic uses ‘our’ runway and taxiway infrastructure and enters the EBBR departure sequence. Historically, the management of the airport was taken up by a set of public companies. Nowadays, the Belgian state retains a minority share of 25%, + 1 share in Brussels Airport Company.
BRU is an IATA level 3 coordinated airport, meaning that an airport slot is required to operate in and out of it. Our colleagues of Belgium Slot Coordination, a full EUACA member, are taking care of this.
Since this is about A-CDM, let’s set terminal ops aside and focus on airside operations. Those are covered by 4 ground handlers, one of which is dealing exclusively with business aviation and governmental flights. We get a fair amount of those, thanks to European decision makers’ and multinational HQ-s at a stone’s throw away from the airport.Except for the business aviation handler, all others cover their own de-icing operations independently and only a modest level of steering from the airport is involved here.
Our Air Navigation Service Provider is called Belgocontrol. What is now an autonomous public enterprise, used to form one and the same public entity with the airport operator. This means that ICT wise, Brussels Airport Company and Belgocontrol have a shared history when it comes to creating situational awareness on the airport, and this has proven its benefits, as you will read later on.
A-CDM Brussels Airport
Last but not least, our home carriers Brussels Airlines, Thomas Cook Airlines Belgium, TUI fly (formerly Jetairfly.com), and DHL Aviation to some extent. While Brussels Airlines and charter flight operator Thomas Cook were actively involved as from A-CDM start-up, Jetairfly and DHL took up a more active role in the last couple of years. The bulk of the visiting carriers are represented by the Airline Operators Committee,that sits in on most A-CDM meetings.
In May 2008, all of the above stakeholders but Jetairfly and DHL Aviation signed the Memorandum of Understanding, and officially kicked off Brussels Airport's Airport Collaborative Decision Making project. 2 years later, on June 29th 2010, we delivered common situational awareness on the A-CDM milestones (see post 2) for the airport community, and a stable departure planning information link (see post 3) with Eurocontrol's Network Manager (formerly known as CFMU), thus becoming Europe's 2nd A-CDM airport.
Now that you know the players, let's have a look at the 'game' in the next 2 episodes. No dirty tricks played on the way to implementation, but the ride was exciting nonetheless...
Update on 21 Dec 2017: Jetairfly.com is now part of TUI fly
Additional Resources :www.euro-cdm.org
Image credit: Vitor Azevedo
