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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 0305.PDF
FLIGHT International 289 28 February 1963 M •:/' .iM. r V SYSTEMS Highlights of this year's Flight Systems feature are an article of major importance on the automatic control of jet- and fan-lift VTOL aircraft, beginning on page 294, and the first appraisal of Eurocontrol's plans on the eve of its assumption of executive responsibility, below. France's highly practical development of the national ATC system called Cautra is described on page 291; and three new British instrument displays are reviewed on pages 302 to 305. EUROCONTROL PREPARES TO CONTROL AS soon as the final instrument of ratification (that of France) is deposited at Brussels, in the very near future, the Euro-control Convention will come into force and Eurocontrol will become an official international organization. The Agency which forms part of this organization is charged with assuming executive responsibility for traffic control in the upper airspace over France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg. Germany and the United Kingdom. The convention is officially called "International Convention Relating to Co-operation for the Safety of Air Naviga tion" and the organization's full title is "European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol)." Air traffic control is therefore its method of ensuring safety rather than its sole raison d'etre—and because it operates in the upper airspace where civil aircraft are increasingly moving into a former military preserve, Eurocontrol is inevitably involved with military move ments. Civil/military co-ordination is an integral part of the task. The idea of Eurocontrol was discussed informally over a long period of time, but was first openly proposed by Benelux and Germany at the ICAO Eumed regional meeting at Geneva in 1958. France, Italy and subsequently Britain joined in the planning stages, but Italy, "the only one in step" with a military ATC system, later decided not to sign the Convention but to remain for the time being an interested observer. Several other nations are closely following progress, including Eire, Sweden and Spain, the first being a likely candidate for membership as soon as the agency is formed. Swit zerland and Austria are understood to be considering possible methods of co-operation with Eurocontrol. In order to make use of the time between drawing up and rati fication of the convention, a Eurocontrol association was formed at Paris Orly Airport early in 1961 with a planning directorate of three divisions staffed by specialists drawn from the various member nations' departments of civil and military aviation. The association !s controlled by an assembly, meeting at least annually and consisting !>f national directors of civil aviation—a deputy secretary of MoA rom the UK—and military staffs at vice-chief of air staff level, fo them, the council reports after meeting at least every three months, and this too is a multi-national and civil/military body. M Pierre Nottet, director-general of the aeronautical administra tion, of Belgium, is President of both the Assembly and the Council. The operating body is the Eurocontrol Planning Directorate at Orly Airport, headed by Ingenieur General de 1'Air Rene Bulin, formerly Directeur de la Navigation Aerienne in the French Civil Aviation Administration. Under his direction are the operations division, headed by Mr George Trow, formerly Deputy Director of Control and Navigation Development, MoA, the evaluation division under Dr Hentschel, formerly director of navigation services in Germany, and the administration and finance division. Last October the nucleus of an experimental centre was formed at Bretigny, near Paris, headquarters of the French Centre d'Essais en Vol. When the agency proper is formed, the present assembly and council will be dissolved. A commission and committee of management and the permanent headquarters will be set up in Brussels. The experimental centre will remain at Bretigny. Funds will be contributed by member nations, at least initially in propor tion to their gross national product. The nucleus of an international team, similar in spirit to several others in the UN and OEEC, has now been working for two years. Their first aim has naturally been to gauge the size of the problem, a task complicated by the fact that very few statistics existed on upper airspace traffic. The association's great advantage has been to be able to study and plan without at the same time having to control. So far they have made adequate estimates of routes and movements, checked by independent second estimates, and have laid down the broad lines of a control philosophy. But many major points still remain to be settled—the base level of upper airspace for example. Special transitional agreements are under considera tion with the various countries under which they will provide temporary assistance to Eurocontrol by making available their personnel and equipment to control the upper airspace until the end of 1964. Small Eurocontrol teams will be positioned in each region, with representatives in each upper airspace ATCC, provid ing liaison on day-to-day operational matters. Eurocontrol will from the start have legal responsibility for control, and the complex agreements to cover the transitional period still remain to be com pleted by the agency's legal adviser. While the association's divisions have by no means wasted their two years of non-executive existence, they are far from being able to exercise their powers immediately the agency comes into exis tence. But they have assembled a great deal of new information and, despite their own almost complete lack of equipment, have commissioned research and development projects wherever possible. Specifications and operational requirements for various types of
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