THE FUTURE OF AIR-TRAFFIC CONTROL

Nav Canada, created by the federal government two decades ago, owns and operates the air navigation system in Canada, covering 18 million square kilometres of airspace. The not-for-profit private company has been looking to the future, expanding beyond the conventional radar, especially in remote regions in the north with rough terrain. Since 2009, it has added ADS-B, known as automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast systems, using global positioning systems to track planes over Hudson’s Bay, the eastern Arctic and south of Greenland. One of the biggest challenges it faces is monitoring flights across the Atlantic Ocean — a busy highway of airplanes criss-crossing between North America and Europe. Because there is no radar coverage over the ocean, planes are usually locked in their flight positions, carefully spaced usually 10 minutes, or 80 nautical miles, apart. If planes hit pockets of turbulence here, pilots often cannot move to the left or right, or higher or lower, due to the separation rules. Nav Canada has partnered with Iridium Communications and several other air navigation systems, including those in Italy, Ireland and Denmark, to place satellites and ensure coverage over the globe. The first 10 of 66 expected satellites are expected to launch in November, with service to start in 2018. “This will cover virtually the entire globe, the ocean, the Arctic, every remote region,” said Nav Canada spokesman Ron Singer. “The separation requirement could be narrowed, meaning planes could catch the jet stream or more could go on the fuel-efficient routes.” Nav Canada, the majority owner in the project with a 51-per-cent stake, is investing $150 million. The surveillance system will be paid for on a subscription basis — early estimates suggest annual fuel savings of $80 million for the North Atlantic crossing. “It will be a giant leap to have surveillance over the ocean,” Singer said.