News

May 20, 2022 – After two years of COVID-19 pandemic and virtual meetings it was finally manageable to bring all Airport-CDM partners back around the table for a three-day-event at Düsseldorf Airport. From the 3rd to the 5th of May representatives of all German A-CDM airports and the German DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung - who in 2010 decided to join forces and start the German Airport CDM Harmonization Initiative ACDM@GER – came together to analyse last year’s figures and the upcoming developments and changes of the A-CDM process e.g. with regard to the EU Implementation Rule 2021/116 “Common Project 1 (CP1)”, supporting the implementation of the European Air Traffic Management Master Plan.

The group consisting of airport operators from Munich Airport, Fraport AG, Berlin Brandenburg Airport, Stuttgart Airport, Hamburg Airport, Leipzig/Halle Airport and Düsseldorf Airport as well as DFS members from the local Towers and Headquarters in Langen has tasked itself with harmonizing the German Airport CDM implementations as much as possible so airspace users are not confused by a multitude of rules across the country. ACDM@GER also represents its members with a single voice in international working groups.

Making aviation more predictable and efficient

Airport Collaborative Decision Making, in short A-CDM, is one of the main coordination processes that consolidates the way of operational cooperation by planning each and every step of a flight’s turnaround from landing until the next departure and exchanging lots of relevant data with all the stakeholders involved. In the future, it is foreseen to even extend this data exchange to a far greater timeframe trying to enhance throughput with the resources airports and airspace can offer on any given day. “The initial A-CDM scope that tries to coordinate all stakeholders’ activities during the last three hours before departure is now evolving towards several days before departure, which means we aren’t looking as much at individual flights anymore rather than all cross-company processes at the airports, ending in post-operational reports that help the partners to steadily improve”, says Erik Sinz of Deutsche Flugsicherung, A-CDM expert from the very start.

“Although overall traffic volumes in Germany are still hovering around 75% of 2019 levels, we are already facing challenging operational peaks during the day. These peaks are now even higher than in the pre-COVID era. People are currently longing for vacation, but operational staff is lacking everywhere. Short-term work, fluctuation and dismissals made the aviation sector shrink in terms of employees nearly in all parts and it is hard to find new personnel”, says Nico Ruwe of Stuttgart Airport currently leading ACDM@GER together with Erik Sinz as co-chairmen.

External aviation experts invited to join us on 3rd day

After two days of internal discussions, ACDM@GER invited several European aviation experts to join them on the last day of the event. Colleagues from Lufthansa, Eurowings, Condor, Tuifly, SAS, AHS Aviation Handling Services, WISAG, Acciona and the Network Manager’s Airport Unit from EUROCONTROL came to Düsseldorf Airport and also benefited from personal contacts, discussions, networking and exchanging different points of view e.g. on the upcoming implementation of the Airport Operations Plan (AOP) - Network Operations Plan (NOP) Integration which is compulsory for the stakeholders by the European Commission within CP1 until the end of 2027.

“I am really happy for this personal meeting and thankful for the opportunity given by our airport management”, says this year’s host Linda Gerritsen, Local A-CDM Manager at DUS. “We are all looking forward to May 2023, when we will meet again for the 16th ACDM@GER Harmonization Meeting in STR”, she adds.

Further development as part of NM Releases 25.0

At selected Airport-CDM airports, EUROCONTROL is offering airline OCCs automatic Estimated off-block time (EOBT) updates of flights whose local TOBT is more than 15 minutes later than the current EOBT. Regardless of this new function, manual EOBT updates are still possible.

Within the scope of the - NM EOBT Update Service - operative since 2016 there will be the following development as part of NM Release 25.0:

CR_040048 – Improvements of DLA delegation

Adaption of the EOBT Update Service for airlines departing from participating A-CDM Airports by allowing the airline to specify when the „DLA-transmission“ would be done. 

Begin of migration: 27/04/2021

Contact

Airlines that are currently using the EOBT Update Service and wish to make use of this additional feature, or other airlines that are interested in that service should contact the Network Manager at: airport-cdm@eurocontrol.int 

For information concerning the Network Manager EOBT Update Service you can also contact the A-CDM Local Manager of your specific German A-CDM Airport

2019’s annual Harmonization Meeting of the Airport CDM Harmonization Initiative Germany (ACDM@GER) took place from 5. to 7. November 2019 at Hamburg Airport. Over the first two days, more than 20 representatives of the six German A-CDM airports, towers of Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH (DFS / German ANSP) and DFS Headquarters discussed the results achieved by the various ACDM@GER subgroups during the year 2019.

These subgroups deal, among other things, with necessary modifications in the DPI exchange with the Network Manager (NMOC), optimizations or adaptions of the A-CDM procedures, and the provision of standardized key performance indicators for the A-CDM process. During the meeting, national harmonization of the automated TOBT generation (elimination of alert CDM14), the “return to stand” procedure and a new definition of alerts CDM07 and CDM07a (feasibility check) were adopted.

Besides the reports of the subgroups, several presentations on both national and international topics were shown and some forward-looking projects introduced. Some airports started research on the use of artificial intelligence within the turnaround process. In addition, initial ideas on the optimization of the pre-departure sequencer by using pre-defined scenarios were developed. Some interesting local procedures at other European CDM airports were also presented, such as Madrid Airport’s implementation of a special prioritization procedure in case of expected significant decreases in departure capacity.

Traditionally ACDM@GER uses the third day for an intense exchange with different stakeholders. For this meeting, Airline OCCs, HCCs or dispatch units were invited to join the meeting. Unfortunately, due to the strike of Lufthansa cabin crews, the large majority of the airline representatives had to withdraw their participation. Nevertheless, a very constructive and professional discussion with the guests from the Network Manager and the airlines took place during which additional fields of closer co-operation could be identified, with first joint undertakings already having been agreed on.

The ACDM@GER Harmonization Meeting 2019 once again illustrated the large amount of topics and challenges to ensure efficient processes between the involved stakeholders. Close co-operation between the German A-CDM airports and DFS as their local and central partner contributes in an essential way to the successful accomplishment of all these tasks.