Paul Phelan/CAIRNS Paul Lewis/WASHINGTON
The recent opening of a new future air navigation systems (FANS) airway across western China should have been a crowning moment for the route's main trailblazer Qantas. Instead, it has deteriorated into a squabble between the Australian carrier and other international airlines unable to use the new L888 routing.
Qantas will be the only airline capable of flying the new "Silk Road Route", until airlines such as Air France, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Virgin Atlantic modify their operational procedures and aircraft, or China agrees to amend the route. The former course would, in most cases, require the acquiesence of individual regulatory authorities - a bureaucratic and time-consuming exercise few would relish.
The launch entailed six years of joint planning, systems development and training preparation by the Civil Aviation Authority of China (CAAC), Airservices Australia and Qantas.
Qantas' position is that, having done all the leg work to make the route a reality, culminating in its 24 June flight from Bangkok to Heathrow, moving L888 130km (70nm) north would add flying time and penalise the airline.
An aeropolitical exchange of claims and counter claims has made it difficult to work out who is at fault. Qantas officials say that, through meetings with the International Air Transport Association (IATA), other carriers should have been aware of the L888 routing all along. Critics say that, while talks with China were initiated by IATA, Qantas went very much on its own and the co-ordinates only became known when it was too late to stop the testing.
As it now stands, L888 will open up air traffic over the Tibetan Plateau in western China and clip up to 50min from scheduled flight times on conventional routes, with an expected average saving of 25-30min for flights from European hubs to Bangkok. It also provides Qantas and South-East Asia's carriers with a strategically important alternative to the congested Calcutta corridor.
Although the Boeing 747-400 FANS-1 package has flown on transpacific routes for five years, Boeing and Qantas say the new route is the first to be totally reliant on the ground and air functionality of all three elements of FANS - satellite-based communications, navigation and surveillance (CNS). Three air traffic control centres have been FANS-equipped in China at a cost of about $2 million. The Chinese military also has workstations allowing it to monitor FANS flights.
Unlike other FANS routes, however, the primary function of FANS-1 on Route L888 is not flexible routing, but the ability to precisely maintain a fixed route from the Russia/China border point at Revki, across the plateau to a turning point west of Chungdu and south to the China exit point at Simao. It also has to navigate engine and pressurisation contingency diversions using CNS systems and procedures exclusively.
This is where the problem occurs. Much of the 3,150km route has a minimum safe altitude (MSA) of 22,220ft (6,780m), while the highest MSA on the almost parallel 3,640km conventional route is 17,145ft. For all carriers other than Qantas, the MSA is legally unacceptable, particularly for a three-engined drift down in wind.
Thai Airways' answer appears to be to add more passenger oxygen bottles for high-altitude diversions - Qantas carries up to 13 - but this adds weight and does not address the issue of MSAs. Regulators have yet to come to an agreement with the Chinese on methods of determining MSAs on the route. These are related to technically differing methods of providing a buffer for mountain wave effect in calculating minimum terrain clearance.
Apart from Thai, all other carriers have said that they cannot use L888 as it stands. They have requested an alternative route, "L888A", slightly further north, where MSAs could be accommodated with existing oxygen capacity and under the existing rules of their regulators. It would also open the route to FANS-equipped twin-engined aircraft. This has won the endorsement of the local IATA regional office, which has forwarded the request to Beijing.
"We're supporting the airlines' needs when it comes to amending L888 because only one airline can now use it. A host of other carriers have said that if it moves further north they will not only be able to use the route, but it will provide a better transition from L888 to Shanghai and Hong Kong. Our request, and China is still working this, is to have both routes," says Dave Behrens, IATA Asia-Pacific assistant director infrastructure.
Whether China will agree to two new virtually parallel routes over what remains a sensitive region of the country remains to be seen. Beijing's agreement to open L888, however, is seen as highly significant and comes days ahead of an expected transfer of 26 major airways from military to civilian control.
Aligning L888 with route B330 into Hong Kong and a proposed new route via Wuhan into Shanghai would prove a major benefit for eastbound traffic seeking more favourable winds.
Westbound traffic, meanwhile, awaits the opening of an even more northerly route from Yabrai through outer Mongolian airspace. The hope is that this will be achieved with less acrimony than that surrounding L888.
Source: Flight International
