On Sept. 11, Eurocontrol awarded the A-CDM label to Nice Côte d’Azur airport, which now adds its name to the 28 other major European airports already approved as meeting the Eurocontrol criteria to optimize the management of European airspace. This major milestone was achieved in record time thanks to the expertise and collaboration of teams from RESA and ATRiCS.
In just a few months, Nice Côte d’Azur airport succeeded in implementing and obtaining approval for its A-CDM system, developed in close partnership with RESA and ATRiCS.
The INFOPAX AODB (Airport Operational Data Base) system had already been up and running for several years. This tool centralizes, processes and shares the information required to manage the airport’s flights and related resources (aircraft parking, boarding gates, check-in desks, etc.). RESA has now upgraded its system by integrating A-CDM. To achieve this, the company has developed an interface that communicates continuously with the ATRiCS solution in order to send data that is essential for CDM. As a result, all ground operations can be scheduled smoothly, from the moment the aircraft arrives until it departs again, with the goal of predicting its take-off time as accurately as possible. The A-CDM approval actually marks a new step for a data exchange system that the supplier has already been running for several years with Eurocontrol. The first level involved setting up a connection with the CFMU - in other words, one-way receipt of messages containing flight data from Eurocontrol. The second, known as Advanced ATC Tower, added a function enabling the airport to send messages to Eurocontrol about target take-off times. The third level, Full A-CDM, now includes an information exchange portal for all airport partners: ATC, the airport operator, ground handlers and airlines.
The second company, ATRiCS, worked on the development and implementation of an automated tool called Collaborative Pre-Departure Sequencing System. This system brings together all the data provided by the INFOPAX AODB system, its purpose being to continuously plan and calculate flight take-off times based on the various local and European constraints (runway capacity, congestion in the skies, etc.), thereby providing the people responsible for managing air traffic with better means of predicting and anticipating flights: The strength of this solution, endorsed by Nice Côte d’Azur airport, lies in its reliability and the fact it adapts to airport needs in real time.
After setting up the Advanced ATC-Tower developed by RESA in December 2016, Nice Airport went on to implement Full A-CDM in November 2019, obtaining Eurocontrol approval just a few months later, in September 2020.
“This approval marks the end of an intense, exciting period of work during which our suppliers tackled a host of challenges. We now have a comprehensive, stable, reliable and scalable solution for optimising all our operations. In concrete terms, it will enable us to cut taxiing and queuing times at runways, which in turn will cut greenhouse gas emissions for both those flight phases. More generally speaking, the ACDM system reasserts our firm place at the heart of European airspace and the future of air travel, which will be all about combining economic and environmental performance,” explained Franck Goldnadel, chairman of the Board of Directors of Aéroports de la Côte d’Azur.
“The success of the project itself owes to the fact we applied the tenets of CDM: collaboration, decision making, implementation. The synergy between teams from RESA, Nice Airport and ATRiCS was an incredible driver for all the people involved in this project. Nine months of intense work have resulted in Nice becoming the 4th French airport to obtain EUROCONTROL approval thanks to the RESA A-CDM system. We are extremely proud of this and would like to extend our sincere thanks to everyone who took part,” added Florian Reischek, RESA product director.
“A-CDM is part of the long-standing partnership between RESA and Aéroports de la Côte d’Azur. We will continue to apply our strategy, which has made us the only European leader in this field to have developed all its products in-house, and the only French group to offer this system. In this context, the Nice Airport A-CDM project tasked RESA with overcoming some unprecedented challenges: a very tight timetable, new functions aimed at optimising flight times and sharing information at local and European level, and lastly, the design and EUROCONTROL approval of a software system that can be tailored to any size of airport. At a time when the aviation industry and, through a knock-on effect, the airport sector, are facing the worst crisis in their history, we are proud to demonstrate, alongside Nice Airport, that innovation is still a fundamental value in our industry,” stressed Renaud Willard, CEO, RESA.
“We drew on our previous achievements in Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Hamburg and Stuttgart, for example, and the projects currently being set up in British airports. So it truly makes us proud to see our solutions being implemented in France. Airports across Europe are really starting to become aware of the need to manage flight departure sequences. Our customers are acutely attuned to the subtleties involved in the challenges to be tackled thanks to EUROCONTROL’s awareness-raising efforts and messages about A-CDM,” analyzed Wolfgang Hatzack, CEO, ATRiCS.
This ambitious project was co-funded by the European Union, the Direction des services de la Navigation aérienne (France’s air traffic control agency, the DSNA) and Nice Côte d’Azur airport.
