• Media Center

DANS signs first cooperation agreement with EUROCONTROL in the GCC

Date of becoming Airline Partner in AACO:
Dubai Air Navigation Services (DANS), the Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP) for Dubai's two international airports and the airspace of the Northern Emirates, and EUROCONTROL, an intergovernmental air traffic management organisation made up of 41 Member-states from the European region and the European Union, have signed a Cooperation Agreement - the first of its kind in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.

The Cooperation Agreement has been signed by the CEO of DANS, H.E. Mohammed Abdulla Ahli and the Director General of EUROCONTROL, Mr. Frank Brenner on 19 January during a seminar on "RECAT-EU" hosted by DANS.

DANS is the first ANSP in the GCC to sign a cooperation agreement with EUROCONTROL. The agreement will provide new opportunities for mutual benefit and will also pave the way for collaboration on research and development, exchange of information and provision of support on specific activities between both organizations across various fronts. The deployment of this agreement will also provide DANS with access to unique market intelligence, as well as the opportunity to collaborate on cutting edge concepts.

One of the first areas for joint activity that will take place under this agreement is to advance the research on the Wake Vortex concepts. Wake has a large role to play in determining how many aircraft can land at an airport in a given time period.

DANS has been experimenting how the wake spacing between successive arrivals - the gap between successive aircraft - can be safely reduced. One of the wake projects is called RECAT, which is designed to recategorise the existing four wake turbulence categories into six new wake categories. DANS has been running a campaign to capture wake data for the last 18 months, and now has the database of approximately 160,000 tracks showing wake vortexes behaviour in the Dubai environment.

EUROCONTROL has been instrumental in the RECAT concept research and has developed a Safety Case which has subsequently been endorsed by the European Aviation Safety Agency.

The agreement will enable further research on RECAT and the sharing with DANS of the safety case developed by EUROCONTROL. The agreement will also assist in delivering solutions such as RECAT, which is one of the potential solutions to be utilized by DANS to accommodate the escalating increase in capacity at Dubai International Airport.

Source: Emirates News Agency (WAM)

Regional Main Contact

follow us on