FAB CE News

A Functional Airspace Block Central Europe (FAB CE) Performance Plan was presented on 29 April 2014 at stakeholder’s consultation meeting between the representatives of FAB CE (states, national supervisory bodies, service providers) and air navigation service users (airlines) in Prague.

The FAB CE was established in 2011 within the common initiative of seven states (Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austria, Hungary, The Czech Republic and Slovakia) and air navigation service providers (ANSP) in Central Europe, following the EU initiative for the creation of the Single European Sky (SES) independent of state borders.

One of the most important tasks within ANSPs cooperation in the FAB CE is the development of a common performance plan (FAB CE Performance Plan) for a 5-year period (2015 -2019), comprising four key areas in air traffic management: safety, capacity, environment and cost-effectiveness.

A Draft Plan indicates significant improvements in all areas where the FAB CE aims to completely meet the requirements set by the EC, such as a decrease in delays from 0.32 minutes per flight in 2015 to 0.29 minutes per flight in 2019, and a decrease in the determined unit cost from EUR 48.6 in 2015 to EUR 42.8 in 2019.

FAB Central Europe (FAB CE), bringing together air navigation service providers (ANSPs) from Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia, has now published its Performance Plan for the second Reference Period, 2015-2019 (RP2), excluding Bosnia and Herzegovina due to its non-EU membership status.

The plan shows significant performance improvement in all areas: safety, environmental performance, capacity and cost efficiency. FAB CE is even exceeding the targets set by the European Commission. 

The main performance plan figures for ANSPs are as follows:

Functional Airspace Blocks (FABs) are a fundamental part of Europe’s plans to build single European airspace, in order to deliver safer, more efficient and seamless air traffic management for the benefit of all airspace users and their passengers. Those benefits must be real and measurable, in accordance with the requirements of the EC.

Commenting on the figures, the Chairman of the FAB CE CEO Committee Dragan Bilac said: “These figures show that the hard work of all FAB CE members is gaining benefits. They show a very positive development and prove that FAB CE is on track to meet its targets”.

“The targets are feasible and indicate that our members are contributing very positively to meeting this important European goal. I would like to thank all of our staff for their hard work so far and I am confident we will achieve these targets”, he continued.

The next Social Dialogue Workshop will take place on April 30 in Prague. Topics of discussion will include SES and SES 2+ as well as ongoing activities regarding RP2 targets and the FAB CE Performance Plan.

The 15th FAB CE CEO Meeting was held in Ljubljana on January 23. Significant progress was made towards establishing the FAB CE Legal Entity. Other important work items were the review of social dialogue matters and its continuation in 2014.

The progress on the FABCE Strategy update development and the alignment of the implementation planning towards the FAB CE performance plan for the Reference Period Two (RP2) as well as the application of the common competence scheme were also discussed.

The new FAB CE Newsletter (December) offers insight into the ongoing activities of FAB CE. The newsletter is available for download now.

In this edition:

- Meet the Chairman
- Selected Project Reports with Highlights
- From Master Plan to Implementation
- Inter-FAB cooperation
- Looking ahead

FAB CE Newsletter December

November 2013 – The CEOs of all 7 FAB CE (Functional Airspace Block Central Europe) air navigation service providers signed the Interconnection Framework Agreement on a regional network for the transmission of information. This agreement crowns several years of active cooperation among network professionals on the development of their ANSPs’ cross-border network, in short X-bone.

The Interconnection Framework Agreement (IFA) was developed in close cooperation between the network and legal experts. In addition to standard contractual content, the agreement encompasses up-to-date architecture, procedures related to operations, maintenance and development, list of allowed applications, management body and its procedures and effective list of contacts.

X-bone is a fully redundant IPv6 backbone, interconnecting individual networks of national ANSPs. It serves for operational as well as for test and development purposes between the ANSPs in Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia. Extension to FAB CE as well as other countries is foreseen in the near future. The operational platform (X-bone OPS) is used for exchange of operational messaging (OLDI) and surveillance (SSR) data between the end user applications. The test platform (X-bone TEST) is used for various tests related to new configurations, pre-operational validation, validation of new applications, etc.

This agreement is a fine example of the successful cooperation between all 7 ANSPs as part of FAB CE and is the result of developments originally initiated by LPS SR in close cooperation with Austro Control and HungaroControl as adjacent neighbours a few years ago.

FAB CE is the joint initiative of 7 States and ANSPs from Central Europe. The Participating States are: Austria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia. The respective participating ANSPs are: Austro Control, BHANSA, Croatia Control, ANS CR, HungaroControl, LPS SR and SloveniaControl.