International Civil Aviation Day!

7 December, Worldwide

23 years ago the International Civil Aviation Day as part of ICAO’s 50th anniversary activities was established .

In 1996, pursuant to an ICAO initiative and with the assistance of the Canadian Government, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution A/RES/51/33 to officially recognise the 7th of December as the International Civil Aviation Day within the UN system.

The purpose of the global celebration is to recognise  and reinforce the importance of international civil aviation in the

social and economic development  of the Member States, whose role is to promote safety, efficiency and the development of worldwide air transport.

EUROCAE is celebrating the international civil aviation day with the Aviation Community!

EUROCAE Secretariat

EUROCAE at High Level Conference on Drones 2017 in Helsinki

21-22 November, Helsinki, Finland

The annual HL Conference on Drones was hosted by the Finnish Transport Safety Agency (TRAF) and EASA in Helsinki. Commissioner Bulc opened the event, with more than 400 international participants, underlining the importance to provide a solid base for drone industry to develop and grow in Europe. She mentioned in her speech that standards are of highest importance to serve this fast growing market needs. In her conclusions she repeated the four key priorities (in this order): provide the regulatory frame, industry standards, a test environment and the public acceptance of drones.

Patrick Ky, Executive Director of EASA, presented EASA's approach on developing operations centric and performance based regulations referencing directly to industry standards.

Christian Schleifer-Heingärtner, Secretary General of EUROCAE answered in his presentation that work is underway at WG-105 where, meanwhile, 110 organisations and 

240 individual experts signed up, to support six focus areas and developstandards in the area of Command, Control and Communication including Security aspects (C3&S), Detect and Avoid (DAA), Enhanced RPAS Automation (ERA, incl. Autotaxi, ATOL and Emergency Recovery), UAS Traffic Management (UTM, incl. Geo-fencing and Identification), Design & Airworthiness Standards (D&AW), Specific Operational Risk Assessment (SORA), Remote Pilot Stations (RPS, on ATM Interface aspects).

Furthermore, he presented the excellent work done at the EUSCG where European regulators and standard developing organisations (SDOs) coordinate UAS related activities across Europe. And as a highlight, that the first preliminary version of the Rolling Development Plan (RDP) was published and made publicly available just the day before. Participants were able to download the RDP and saw on overview of all standardisation and regulatory activities.

Outcome of the Conference was the Helsinki Declaration, available here.

IAOPA Europe joins EUROCAE as Full Member

The International Council of Aircraft Owner and Pilot Associations (IAOPA) Europe represents over 45,000 members belonging to 35 autonomous, nongovernmental, national general aviation organisations in almost every nation in Europe.  IAOPA Europe has represented general aviation in Europe for over 50 years and is the voice for general aviation pilots in Europe. The collaboration will enhance and support the inclusion of General Aviation perspectives in the development of standards and strengthen the link between EUROCAE and IAOPA Europe. 

The cooperation will take various forms, including but not limited to exchange of general and technical information; sharing of expertise and best practices; participation in each other’s working groups; coordinated communication activities.

It will be further supported by a Memorandum of Understanding, which is currently being finalised between our two organisations.

EUROCAE WG-107 started its activity

13-14 November, Paris, France

More than 20 members participated in the kick-off meeting of the Working Group: WG-107 “RNP Reversion based on DME/DME”,  which clearly documents the interest in this activity. More participation can be expected considering that the Call for Participation received 33 answers.

The members present elected Gerhard Berz (EUROCONTROL) as Chair of the Working Group and Maurizio Scaramuzza as its Secretary. Gerry will also lead the activity on MASPS (Minimum Aviation System Performance Standard) development whereas Valeriu Vitan (EUROCONTROL) will guide the development of the revision A of the ED-57 MOPS (Minimum Operational Performance Standard).

The purpose of WG-107 is to describe the conditions under which Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) will be able to apply the stringent RNP (Required Navigation Performance) navigation procedures based on DME/DME positioning also in the absence of aircraft positions based on satellite

navigation (e.g. during GNSS outages). This is possible because both, the ground as also the airborne systems, provide DME/DME based positions accurate enough to still operate some RNP procedures. This would allow ANSPs to continue to apply RNP procedures rather than reverting to conventional procedures which put a much higher demand on airspace capacity.

The MASPS will describe end-to-end system requirements including the airborne and the ground part, whereas the revision of ED-57 will update the ground requirements to reflect the improved system capabilities.

The next meetings of WG-107 are scheduled for 19 February 2018 (WebEx), 29 to 30 May 2018 and 09 to 11 October 2018 (the latter two being face-to-face meetings, the location of which will be defined at a later stage).

Participation in the activities of the WG-107 is still possible.
Should you be interested contact Alexander Engel at alexander.engel@eurocae.net  

​EUSCG publishes Rolling Development Plan

17 November, Brussels, Belgium

EUSCG had its 3rd meeting in Brussels hosted by DG-MOVE.

During the meeting experts updated on the activities of each organisation and agreed to publish the preliminary version of the Rolling Development Plan (RDP) which is available on http://eurocae.net/about-us/euscg/.

In addition, EUSCG members agreed to mandate Christian Schleifer, EUSCG Chair, to convey a message during the High Level Meeting on Drones 2017 about the importance of streamlining the standardisation activities across Europe and bringing the EU input to a global level. 

The next EUSCG meeting is planned for 27 February 2018, and will be hosted by EASA in their Brussels office.

EUROCAE - RTCA coordination meeting 

29-30 November, Paris, France

The annual coordination and working meeting between EUROCAE and RTCA took place this week at the new EUROCAE premises.

The RTCA team lead by RTCA President Margaret Jenny and supported by Al Secen, as well as the Program Management Committee (PMC) Chair, Chris Hegarty.

EUROCAE´s team was composed of Eric Bouchard, the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) Chair, Anna von Groote, Alex Engel, and led by Christian Schleifer, Secretary General.

The meeting was dedicated to a detailed review of the various

standardisation activities as well as general items and policy-related subjects, such as our organisations’ contributions to ICAO work.

In closing the meeting all participants recognised the importance of coordination between RTCA and EUROCAE, and the value this coordination brings to the community. It is also an important signal of our continued efforts in working together to achieve our common goals of international harmonisation and global interoperability.

EUROCAE WG-105 UTM activities kicked-off

On 27 November 2017 EUROCAE Working Group 105 “Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)” kicked off two additional activities in a meeting at EUROCONTROL, Brussels. As part of the deliverables within the scope of UTM (UAS Traffic Management) two sub-groups were started: one on Geo-Fencing and one on E-Identification.

Following the Call for Participation with a promising result, progress was in line with what can be expected during a Kick-Off meeting. Members of the two sub-groups were familiarised with the EUROCAE procedures and processes to be applied, provided an overview of their experience and expectations and decided on a way of working. Most important: a work schedule was developed and future meetings scheduled.

This Kick-Off meeting will be followed by a subsequent joint meeting scheduled for 30 January 2018 in Brussels (exact location still to be decided) before the groups will split to start their work on the respective deliverables – a MASPS (Minimum Aviation System Performance Standard) and a MOPS (Minimum Operational Performance Standard) for each of the two activities.
The groups are still looking for expertise and more participation. Should you be interested to contribute to this important work please contact the respective Technical Programme Manager Alexander Engel: alexander.engel@eurocae.net.

EUROCAE Broadcast #7 is now available

The 7th edition of the Broadcast will offer you an overview of the EUROCAE activities since April. 

From completing the move to Saint-Denis and the new IT system implementation to additional WG support, 2017 has been another successful year for our organisation.

You will find in this edition several highlights of current and new activities that our Working Groups are undertaking, as well as an industry overview from our partners. This gives a flavor of how important that EUROCAE standards are in high demand from the industry, regulators and our international partners. The list of new EUROCAE Documents is also available for your reference.

We also provide you a glance of the new facilities and encourage you to take full advantage of it.
Last but not least, we are glad to address also via the Broadcast a very warm welcome to our new members.

Enjoy reading!

EUROCAE documents

All EUROCAE publications are accessible by clicking the button below