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Nav Canada, alongside project partners NATS and Aireon LLC, has received the World ATM Congress’ 2020 Maverick Award for Collaboration for their work to transform how air traffic is managed in the North Atlantic.
The collaboration award recognizes the importance of effective relationships and partnerships across sectors to achieve a shared goal.
Due to the cancellation of World ATM Congress 2020, winners of each category were announced earlier this week via teleconference by ATCA’s president and CEO Peter F. Dumont and CANSO’s director general Simon Hocquard.
In March 2019, Nav Canada, NATS and Aireon transformed the global airspace by safely transitioning a new air traffic services surveillance capability into live service.
Aireon’s space-based automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) was deployed alongside existing Nav Canada and NATS capabilities in this collaborative effort to pioneer new global air traffic control separation standards and create a revised concept of operations for the North Atlantic region.
“While this award recognizes a successful project partnership, it is also a reflection of the strong bonds and inter-connectedness of the aviation community world-wide and what we can achieve together,” said Neil Wilson, president and CEO of Nav Canada.
“When the Aireon system went live last year, the true value of partnership and collaboration was demonstrated in the North Atlantic deployment, requiring extensive work and coordination amongst NATS, Nav Canada, Aireon and additional stakeholders. Without this collaboration, the goal of global ATC surveillance would not have been possible. This has set the standard for how space-based ADS-B is operationalized and we look forward to working with the ATM industry to provide similar benefits to other parts of the world,” Don Thoma, CEO of Aireon
“Space-based ADS-B is truly a transformational technology that is not only changing how we operate over the North Atlantic but will also affect how air traffic is managed around the world over the coming years,” added Juliet Kennedy, NATS operations director.
