The 2021 edition of the Annual KPI Report is ready! This document contains important performance indicators that are comparable across all German A-CDM airports. It aids in recognising local as well as national trends and developments.
The Report for the year 2021 is available in English and German and can now be downloaded.
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.
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.
The development and release of a joint digital platform encourages more transparency and a more comprehensive data and information exchange amongst all A-CDM participants by visualizing and providing essential operational information. The app is supposed to support the harmonization of air traffic, the efficiency at airports and the safety on ground. It displays the relevant milestones, time stamps and status in an easy and efficient way and highlights changes, also by sending push notifications simultaneously to the user.
Target Groups:
The app can be downloaded free of charge in the well-known App Stores for iOS and Android. Every interested airport may become part of the A-CDM platform!
Even if a look back at the past year does not promise lots of fun from an aviation point of view, it still offers interesting insights into operations in drastically changed conditions. Some of these can be found in the 2020 edition of the Annual KPI Report which contains important performance indicators that are comparable across all German A-CDM airports. It aids in recognising local as well as national trends and developments.
The Report for the year 2020 is available in English and German and can now be downloaded.
Airport Collaborative Decision Making aims to improve the efficiency and resilience of airport operations by optimising the use of resources and improving predictability of air traffic.
The exchange of more accurate and timely departure information (e.g. target take-off times) with the network lead to better airspace planning and more accurate and timely arrival information (e.g. estimated landing times) lead the focus on aircraft turnaround and pre-departure processes.
Nowadays, A-CDM is implemented at 31 European airports, i.e. 36% of all departures in the NM area are leaving from airports that are fully connected to NMOC (Network Manager Operation Center) in Brussels.
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
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
On 01 December 2020 Leipzig/Halle Airport joined the German Airport CDM Harmonization Initiative (ACDM@GER) as the seventh German airport.
At Leipzig/Halle Airport a possible A-CDM project is currently evaluated. A respective draft paper has been developed by experts of Leipzig/Halle Airport, the German ANSP Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH and DHL as one of the local partners.
Munich, Frankfurt, Langen, Berlin, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Leipzig – in all these cities, tower and airport colleagues sat in front of their computers on the morning of 1 December, wishing they were in Düsseldorf instead.
That was where Linda Gerritsen, Local CDM Manager and designated host of the 13th Harmonization Meeting, was also sitting in front of her own laptop and staring unhappily into her webcam. "I miss you," was one of the most frequently heard phrases on that and the following day.
In order to relate to this sentiment, it might help to have worked with the colleagues from airport operators and DFS for a while, who in 2010 decided to join forces and start the German Airport CDM Harmonization Initiative ACDM@GER. Within that group, a spirit of collaboration has since developed that managed to impress the expert jury of the renowned Jane’s ATC Awards enough to nominate it in 2016’s "Runway" category.
The group, recently having welcomed Leipzig/Halle Airport as its newest member, 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.
This voice currently speaks for a total of seven airports and the German ANSP DFS and is often regarded by other organizations and airline operators as exemplary for how to prevent a proliferation of different procedures and approaches. "In European meetings at Eurocontrol, airline representatives present their experiences and often finish with, ‘Can’t you do it like the Germans?’" says Nico Ruwe and smiles subtly. Mr Ruwe of Flughafen Stuttgart and Erik Sinz of Deutsche Flugsicherung currently lead ACDM@GER as co-chairmen. "You can imagine that makes us somewhat proud," he adds.
The two chairmen are equally proud of their common smartphone app that already contains essential Airport CDM data of four German airports. Its target users are flight crews who seek early information on expected departure runway, departure route (SID) or start-up approval time (TSAT), thereby lightening the load of related questions on DELIVERY frequencies and ATCOs. Development of the app was organized by Berlin’s airport operator FBB on behalf of all airports organized in ACDM@GER, but others are welcome to join as well.
This spirit of collaboration across company lines continues in regular conversations and smaller meetings between the more than 40 individuals, even if this year they mostly took place via web conference only.
The main Harmonization Meeting itself was originally planned as a three-day event with participation of high-ranking managers from all partners and included an evening programme, however as Europe moved through the tidal waves of Covid-19 infection, the number of in-person participants and the agenda were adjusted multiple times until, a few weeks before the meeting, everything was pushed entirely into cyberspace. "In this medium, the valuable discussions we usually have could not develop, nevertheless I am still happy we managed to see and fill each other in on the latest news", says Erik Sinz.
Personal contacts, discussions, participation of colleagues from the Network Manager unit in Brussels, and the usual social gathering on the evening of the first meeting day were not the only things participants had to do without this year: Also missing was the 10th Anniversary Party of ACDM@GER. "Next year our last meeting day will be 11/11, so we are going to save it all up for our 11th anniversary," says Erik Sinz.
He also has a notion of will be needed for this plan to succeed in Stuttgart in 2021: "Luck."
The new version of the harmonized Pilot Reference Card for the six German Airport-CDM airports is now available. The following has changed:
The 2019 edition of the Annual KPI Report is ready! This document contains important performance indicators that are comparable across all German A-CDM airports. It aids in recognising local as well as national trends and developments.
The Report for the year 2019 is available in English and German and can now be downloaded.
On October 31, 2020 the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport "Willy Brandt" (BER) will open whose area includes that of the current Schönefeld (SXF) airport. Even with many other things at the airport changing, Airport CDM remains and will continue to function for its users exactly as before in SXF.
To make this possible, many background processes were adjusted and optimized during the previous months. To make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible, additional A-CDM experts from DFS Headquarters will join the local A-CDM team of FBB and DFS tower during the transition phase to monitor the process and A-CDM performance and support where needed. Contact details for the jointly operated FBB/DFS A-CDM Back Office will be published here shortly.
Until the opening, both A-CDM processes for SXF and BER are available on this site. At the beginning of November 2020 SXF data will be removed.
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.
The 2018 edition of the Annual KPI Report is ready! This document is published within the first half of every year and contains important performance indicators that are comparable across all German A-CDM airports. It aids in recognising local as well as national trends and developments.
The Report for the year 2018 is available in English and German and can now be downloaded.
July 2018:
Awareness Campaign to reduce delay at Düsseldorf Airport
At the beginning of the summer period 2018 Düsseldorf Airport published an awareness campaign to improve punctuality, i.e. by better adhering to the A-CDM procedures.
Flyers, posters and stickers are addressed to the following target groups: Flight Crews, Ramp Handling and Pushback Service Providers.
Each of these stakeholders has to stick to the procedures to make sure that the existing capacity at the airport and in the airspace can be used optimally. In times of high demand no shows at the runway due to missing TOBT and TSAT as well as late TOBT updates result in unused resources which then means additional delay for the entire system.
In Düsseldorf this is really sensitive due to the local RWY usage permit. The A-CDM motto “Best planned – best served” is more important than ever. At DUS Airport a continuous check and realistic TOBT setting is desirable during the turnaround process. Flight Crew, Ramp Agent and Gate Staff should be in contact with each other so that potential delays might be advised to the TOBT responsible person as early as possible.
The campaign is published in German to the greatest extent, but flyers, posters and stickers for Flight Crews are also distributed in English.
June 2018:
Any change of more than 15 minutes to the EOBT of a filed flight plan has to be communicated to EUROCONTROL.
At selected Airport-CDM airports, EUROCONTROL is offering airline OCCs automatic 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.
Are you interested in finding out more or organising a trial? Have a look at EUROCONTROL’s leaflet or contact our colleagues in Brussels via e-mail.
