The European Coordination of Air Traffic Controllers’ Unions (ATCEUC) and the Cyprus Air Traffic Controllers’ Union (CYATCU) have called for urgent, high-level international and European action to address the long-standing risks to flight safety in the Nicosia FIR, following a near-miss incident between a Turkish military aircraft and a civilian passenger aircraft.
In separate letters sent on Thursday, the two organizations warned that, 14 years after the European Commission described the situation in the Nicosia FIR as “unsustainable and unacceptable from a flight safety perspective,” no effective technical solution has been implemented.
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The new calls follow an incident that occurred on the evening of August 19 involving a Turkish Air Force Airbus A400M transport aircraft and aBoeing 737-800 operated by TUI Airways in the Nicosia FIR.
According to ATCEUC, the Turkish military aircraft, with call sign TUAF770, entered the Nicosia FIR without re-establishing communication and followed a course different from that specified in its filed flight plan. The aircraft was climbing to flight level FL360 in the northern part of the Nicosia FIR, near the border with the Ankara FIR, while the civilian aircraft, flight number TOM56T, was descending through FL350 on a converging course.
SEE ALSO: How a collision between a Turkish military aircraft and a passenger plane was avoided in the Nicosia FIR
According to ATCEUC, a serious incident was averted after air traffic controllers at the Nicosia Area Control Center (ACC) detected the collision course and instructed the civilian aircraft to halt its descent.
The European federation stated that the incident demonstrates that the long-standing problem in the Nicosia FIR has not been resolved and that military aircraft and unmanned aerial operating from Turkey continue to operate without effective coordination near critical air routes and at the Larnaca and Paphos airports.
In its letter, CYATCU warned that safety risks can no longer be left to the vigilance of individual air traffic controllers.
The union stated that the incident on August 19 was not an isolated one, but “a visible moment in a pattern” that its members have been experiencing for years. According to CYATCU, its members at the Nicosia ACC face unauthorized flights by Turkish military aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles in the Nicosia FIR on a daily basis, without flight plans filed in Nicosia and without two-way communication.
Air traffic controllers, he noted, are required to monitor, anticipate, and counteract the movements of aircraft whose flights are not coordinated with Nicosia, while simultaneously managing general air traffic to and from the airports in Larnaca and Paphos.
“The reason the Nicosia FIR has not recorded a fatal accident to date, despite this behavior, is not that the risk is being managed by any institution represented in this correspondence. “It is because our members, for decades now, have personally borne a risk that rightfully falls under international enforcement,” CYATCU stated.
The union warned that air traffic controllers’ vigilance cannot be considered a permanent guarantee against a serious accident, especially since the operation of unmanned aerial vehicles adds yet another unpredictable factor to an already complex operational environment.
These measures come 14 years after the European Commission expressed concern about dangerous incidents in the Nicosia FIR. In a letter to the ATCEUC in March 2012, the Commission expressed “deep concern” about the reported increase in incidents and acknowledged the serious threat they posed to aviation safety, noting that it was working with the parties involved to find a satisfactory technical solution.
However, ATCEUC reported that since then, no technical solution has been announced, made public, or effectively implemented, and direct communication and coordination between the air traffic control centers in Ankara and Nicosia have not been restored.
The European Federation calls for the immediate involvement of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a review of the lack of two-way coordination between Ankara and Nicosia, as well as a new high-level diplomatic initiative by the European Union, with the participation of the European Commission, Cyprus, and Turkey.
It also calls for a joint safety assessment by the European Commission and EUROCONTROL, with the findings made public, as well as a clear and time-bound roadmap for restoring effective operational coordination.
CYATCU supported these requests and called for air traffic controllers at the Nicosia ACC to be directly involved in any safety assessment or incident investigation process.
At the same time, it emphasized that any solution should not place a burden on Cyprus through measures that would restrict civil air traffic or the island’s connectivity, noting that Cyprus should not have to bear the financial or operational consequences of a problem it did not create.
ATCEUC President Jean-Denis Larrère stated that the goal remains to ensure that the skies over the Eastern Mediterranean are safe, predictable, and governed by effective international cooperation and regulations.
“The time has come to turn the 2012 commitments into a sustainable technical solution,” he said.
Source: KYPE
