The Single European Sky regulation aims at harmonising and restructuring airspace, and promotes the concept and the establishment of Functional Air Blocks (FAB).
The BLUE MED Project is a regional initiative looking at fulfilling the aforesaid regulation for the establishment of Functional Airspace Blocks in the southeast part of the Mediterranean area. The first phase of the Project coordinated by ENAV, the Italian Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP) saw the partecipation of the
Cypriot DCAC, the Greek HCAA, the Maltese MATS, Tunisia's OACA, Egypt's NANSC, Albania's NATA (Associated Partners) and the Civil Aviation Authority of the Heshemite Kingdom of Jordan (Observer) with the expert contribution of EUROCONTROL, the Italian Research Centre of Advanced Systems for Air Traffic Control (SICTA) and the Universities of Trieste, Venice (Italy) and Athens (Greece).
BLUE MED is a three-phase project:
The Feasibility Study Phase (2006-2008) addressed detailed airspace analysis looking at current and foreseen traffic flows, identifying inefficiencies and bottlenecks due to sector structures and working methods constrained by national boundaries and investigating possible solutions. A minimum set of technical enablers such as Surveillance, Networking, ATM tools and Interoperability were identified to support the Future Operational Context for the FAB as well. The Partners conducted this phase through a joint effort, taking into account all relevant existing SES regulations, in order to make coherent and coordinated progress towards the shared SES implementation objectives. Where possible, the use of precious academic know-how and local scientific cooperation was fostered with the inclusion of relevant Universities in the various elements of the Study.
The Feasibility Study was not limited to the national airspace of the states composing the consortium, but was extended to a larger airspace, in strict cooperation with neighbouring States and the other existing FAB initiatives, so as to identify the best suitable operational solutions.
The BLUE MED Consortium released a final "Feasibility Report" to concerned political institutions and authorities, to support their decision making process, which constitutes an indispensable prerequisite to proceeding with the following phases of the Project.
The Definition Phase (2009-2011) will follow the
political engagement of the Partner States in pooling their airspace (or part of it) to build one or more FAB over the area. This Phase will detail and plan all necessary actions, implementation and validation processes to be performed. In particular this phase will address the detailed design and validation of the new airspace structure, the definition and validation of the interoperability mechanisms, the identification of solutions for the legal-institutional and social issues identified in the previous phase and the execution of a full safety assessment. As final step, a Go/No Go decision based on the results of the Definition Phase will be taken, in order to verify the existence of all the prerequisites for the beginning of the Implementation.
All activities will be aligned and phased with the SESAR (Single European Sky ATM Research Project) Definition Phase results and consequently with the European ATM Master Plan.
The Implementation Phase (2011-2012) will be the final step of the FAB establishment through the implementation of the identified operational solutions and the development and deployment of identified technical enablers (in strict cooperation with SESAR and the ATM industry) on the basis of the implementation plan prepared during the BLUE MED Definition Phase. The implementation will also capitalise on parallel existing system development (e.g. the France/Italy/Swiss COFLIGHT Project, and the European Flight Data Processing System).
Towards the Definition Phase
The Feasibility Study
(Dec 2006 - Jul 2008)
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