We’re proud to announce that the groundbreaking Heathrow XMAN cross border arrivals management trial has received prestigious recognition at the annual IHS Jane’s ATC Awards in Madrid, Spain this week – winning the Enabling Technology Award. The collaborative project involving NATS, Snowflake Software, French air traffic control provider DSNA, Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre, Irish Aviation Authority, and Exelis has made significant economic and environmental savings since it launched in April 2014.
The team here at Snowflake implemented our GO Publisher data exchange technology into the NATS operational environment, enabling the use of open standards to exchange arrival sequence data much earlier to adjacent control centres. In doing so, the XMAN trial has begun to demonstrate that operational decisions can be made earlier, slowing aircraft en-route and therefore limiting the amount of time spent in stack holding on arrival. The ultimate aim of the XMAN trial is to reduce average holding times at Heathrow by at least a quarter from the current time of just under 8 minutes.
Since April 2014, NATS has recorded a reduction of up to a minute in holding times for those flights influenced by the trial, saving airlines around £1 million (€1.25m) in fuel and 5,000 tonnes of CO2, as well as reducing noise for communities underneath the stacks. As a result, in September 2014, the minimum stack delay threshold was reduced from nine minutes to seven.
Alex Brooker, Director of Professional Services here at Snowflake commented “We’re thrilled that IHS Jane’s and the Awards Panel has recognized the operational benefit that XMAN has brought to the Airlines, and the great example of collaboration between small business, unique technology and European ANSPs.”
