The Future Airspace Strategy Implementation (North) – ScTMA
Glasgow (FASI-N Glasgow) and Future Airspace Strategy Implementation (North) –
ScTMA Edinburgh (FASI-N Edinburgh) ACPs sponsored by NATS seek to modernise the
enroute airspace surrounding the Scottish TMA to make it simpler, safer and
more fuel-efficient for future air travel.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, four ACPs making changes to the
ScTMA and surrounding airspace were launched.
Two were sponsored by NATS and the other two by Glasgow and Edinburgh
airports. The two NATS sponsored ACPs,
FASI-N Glasgow and FASI-N Edinburgh seek to make changes to the enroute
(>7,000 ft) airspace and were originally envisaged to address the Air Traffic Service (ATS)
routes and connectivity to airport procedures for Edinburgh and Glasgow separately. It is these two ACPs which are being
amalgamated. The remaining two airport
sponsored ACPs address the low level (<7,000 ft) airspace and are sponsored
by Glasgow and Edinburgh airports respectively.
These two ACPs are unaffected by this amalgamation. All four ACPs were paused during covid-19 and
have now restarted their stage 2 work.
During collaborative stage 2 development work with Edinburgh
and Glasgow airports, it became apparent that the emerging options were a
single network change, not two separate network designs. The dependencies on each ACP were such that
it was not plausible to separate the options into those addressing routes serving
the individual airports and doing so would have led to two sets of very similar
ACPs documentation being produced. Both
document sets would have described similar intwined changes to the same
airspace at the same time, which NATS believes would offer a risk of
stakeholder confusion during the consultation phase.
To reduce this impact to stakeholders, NATS proposed a single,
simple, more comprehensive document set addressing the ScTMA enroute changes
and have therefore combined the FASI-N Glasgow and FASI-N Edinburgh ACPs into a
single ACP submission. NATS engaged with
their stakeholders including Edinburgh and Glasgow airports, ACOG and the CAA
to confirm there are no objections to amalgamating these two enroute ACPs or
impact on the delivery of the ScTMA cluster of ACPs. NATS received no objections to this proposal.
NATS reviewed the previously
agreed Design Principles for the two en-route ACPs, ACP-2019-73 (ScTMA Glasgow)
& ACP-2019-74 (ScTMA Edinburgh) and subsequently confirmed with the
CAA that the Design Principles and Statements of Need for the two submissions
are aligned and remain fit for purpose.
ACOG has advised the CAA that this approach is aligned with
iteration 2 of the Masterplan, see ACOG Advice - Amalgamation of ACP-2019-73
(ScTMA Glasgow) & ACP-2019-74 (ScTMA Edinburgh) published on the ACP portal
and the CAA has accepted this advice, see CAA Acceptance of ACOG Advice -
Amalgamation of ACP-2019-73 (ScTMA Glasgow) & ACP-2019-74 (ScTMA Edinburgh)
published on the portal.
NATS and the CAA have agreed that this work will continue as a
single submission using the FASI-N Edinburgh portal page (now titled ACP-2019-74
‘Future Airspace Strategy Implementation – ScTMA’) and document set. The FASI-N Glasgow ACP has been withdrawn.
NATS will continue to engage with all stakeholders as they
progress through the CAP1616 airspace change process.