Isavia ANS, Iceland’s Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP), reached a significant milestone in its deployment of space-based Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) data from Aireon, with the operational use of data down to ground level.
This milestone, put in operation April 10th, is the fourth and final implementation step in a process that kicked off in 2020. The implementation took an incremental approach, first deploying Aireon’s ADS-B data in the upper-level airspace in southern part of the Reykjavik and Nuuk Flight Information Regions (FIRs), before expanding to the northern part and wider altitudes and in the end covering the entire 5.4 million square kilometers of airspace. Isavia ANS’s airspace extends from the North Pole to Scotland and from the prime meridian in Greenwich to west of Greenland. Over a quarter of all air traffic crossing the North Atlantic passes through the area managed by Isavia ANS in Reykjavik Area Control Center (ACC). Given the proximity to the North Pole and that a large portion of the airspace is out of range of ground networks, space-based ADS-B from Aireon has proven to be a great safety improvement for the area and service provided there.
This latest achievement means that Isavia ANS’s air traffic controllers can now monitor aircraft at low altitudes within the Reykjavík FIR — even in mountainous domestic areas and over the ocean beyond the reach of ground stations. Isavia ANS’ subsidiary, Tern Systems in partnership with Isavia ANS´s own development team successfully developed upgrades to the surveillance display system used in the ACC to safely process and display the new data.
“Extending space-based ADS-B coverage to ground/sea level within the Reykjavík FIR marks a major safety and operational milestone in line of successful ADS-B projects at Isavia ANS. This milestone is the result of years of focused effort by Isavia ANS´s technical and operational internal teams. Aireon’s support was key in enabling the company and operation to achieve full space-based ADS-B coverage down to ground level“ said Kjartan Briem, Isavia ANS CEO.
“Congratulations to the Isavia ANS team on reaching this milestone,” said Michele Carandente, Aireon Vice President, ATS Services. “Aireon is proud to partner with Isavia ANS to support its operational and safety goals, and we look forward to continued collaboration in the future.”
