The FASIN MTMA, Manchester and East Midlands (FASIN- Manchester and East Midlands) and FASIN, MTMA - Liverpool (FASIN- Liverpool) ACPs sponsored by NATS seek to modernise the enroute airspace surrounding the Manchester TMA (MTMA) to make it simpler, safer and more fuel-efficient for future air travel.

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, five ACPs making changes to the MTMA and surrounding airspace were launched.  Two were sponsored by NATS and the other three by Manchester. Liverpool and East Midlands airports.  The two NATS sponsored ACPs, FASIN- Manchester and East Midlands, and FASIN- Liverpool 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 Manchester, Liverpool and East Midlands airports separately.  It is these two ACPs which are being amalgamated.  The remaining three airport sponsored ACPs address the low level (<7,000 ft) airspace and are sponsored by Manchester, Liverpool and East Midlands airports respectively.  These three ACPs are unaffected by this amalgamation. 

During collaborative stage 2 development work with Manchester, Liverpool and East Midlands 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 MTMA enroute changes and have therefore combined the FASIN- Manchester and East Midlands, and FASIN- Liverpool ACPs into a single ACP submission.  NATS engaged with their stakeholders including Manchester, Liverpool and East Midlands airports, ACOG and the CAA to confirm there are no objections to amalgamating these two enroute ACPs.  NATS received no objections to this proposal.  NATS subsequently confirmed with the CAA that the Design Principles and Statements of Need for the two submissions are aligned.  NATS and the CAA have agreed that this work will continue as a single submission using the FASIN- Manchester and East Midlands portal page (now titled ACP-2019-77 ‘Future Airspace Strategy Implementation – MTMA’) and document set.  The FASIN, MTMA - Liverpool ACP has been withdrawn.

NATS will continue to engage with all stakeholders as they progress through the CAP1616 airspace change process.