z Europe // Regional Meeting News z Photo: The organizing committee for IFATCA's 36th European Regional meeting Photos: Philippe Domogala
NEWS FROM EUROPEAN REGIONAL MEETING z by Tom Laursen, IFATCA Executive Vice-President for european Region The 36th IFATCA Regional meeting was held from the 8th to the 10th of October in Aqaba, Jordan. It was extremely well organised by our Jordanian member association. While the location probably raises some eyebrow, yes, Jordan is a member of the EUR region, having switched from the Africa/Middle East region a few years ago. The vast majority of their traffic is to/ from the European region, and almost all of it transits via neighbouring Israel, which also is in the EUR region. The European member associations headed to the most southern part of Jordan where the borders between Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, and Jordan meet. Aqaba itself and the venue where the meeting was held are located on the Red Sea, but the desert is only a few kilometres away and makes for a very spectacular landscape. Eighty-five controllers representing 32 countries attended the meeting. The first day consisted of a workshop organised by Marc Baumgartner, IFATCA’s SESAR coordinator. The subject this year was on the effects of the new EU regulation 373
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that affect controllers in Europe, which addresses aspects such as stress, fatigue, use of psychoactive substances, alcohol, sleeping disorders, etc. On the second day, the meeting was opened by the CEO of the Jordanian CAA who laid down the challenges for the industry in the coming years: mainly the rise in traffic, the introduction of drones and their impact on ATM, cybersecurity, and the need to keep safety as a priority despite financial pressures to keep costs down. A known story, but well worth repeating over and over to make sure politicians are listening. In the same spirit, Oliver Wessollek of IFAIMA explained how states are looking at automating flight information in order to lower costs. But automation is known to lower the skills of the human operators and will eventually lead to people completely losing their competence. The president of IFISA, Mikkel Drescher report-
ed on how the organisation is in the process of establishing the international recognition of FIS personnel as an important part of the ATM system. Helena Sjöström, IFATCA Deputy President, presented the goals of IFATCA’s new Equality, Diversity and Ethics Task Force. On that note, it was encouraging to see many female colleagues attending this regional meeting. Other subjects debated were the European Union’s Reporting Period 3 – with moderate cost reductions, EASA-SESAR new developments, etc. Benjamin Fichtner, President of Swiss ATCA explained the disastrous effects of the criminalisation of individual controllers after incidents in Switzerland. A very serious situation that continues to be addressed by IFATCA and even pushed at ICAO levels as it is in full contradiction with the spirit of Just Culture and ICAO Annex19. (Editor’s note: a working paper
THE CONTROLLER
