USAF Team Set To Improve Latin American Airspace Management

The U.S. Air Force's Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) says it could begin conducting site selection surveys as early as next month for a regional coordination center that would help synchronize airspace management in a significant part of Latin American.

A coordination center was one of several recommendations resulting from studies conducted by the Air Force's Electronic Systems Center (ESC), which found that countries in Central and South America could benefit from better radar control and coordination of military and civil flights.

ESC's International Operations Division has prior experience in analyzing and proposing solutions to resolve air traffic management deficiencies in other parts of the world, including Eastern Europe in the 1990s and more recently, Afghanistan and Iraq.

In Central and South America, the Division has conducted studies at a relatively high level compared to those done in the former Warsaw Pact nations, but it immediately some similarities. 

The Central American Corporation for Air Navigation Services (COCESNA) maintains radar control of known air traffic above 19,500 feet in Latin America.  As planes descend, however, there is very limited radar control through the landing phase, so pilots and controllers are forced to rely on procedures alone.  Also, many flights traverse Latin American air space without functioning transponders, and without first filing a flight plan.

All of these conditions result in a less-than-optimal flight safety environment and fail to allow comprehensive identification of all regional air traffic. SOUTHCOM believes that adding radars - both for long-range tracking and terminal control - and integrating their feeds with existing ones into a common operating picture at a regional coordination center, could alleviate many of these problems.

The necessary money for these efforts, Air Force officials believe, might come from the U.S. and individual nations in the region, and possibly from the International Development Bank, COCESNA and ICAO.  01-14-2008.

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