MUAC provides fall-back controller working position services to ANA LUX

Following an agreement concluded in January 2017, EUROCONTROL’s Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre (MUAC) delivered two fall-back controller working positions (FLB-CWP) to the Luxembourg Administration de la navigation aérienne (ANA LUX) in June 2017. To serve the specific needs of the ANA LUX approach terminal manoeuvring area, the working position software was slightly adapted by MUAC, and dedicated map data was incorporated by ANA LUX.

To complete the new Luxembourg Fallback Service (LFS), MUAC is sharing its multi-radar surveillance data (which include radar data provided by ANA LUX partner BELGOCONTROL), as generated by the Maastricht Data Processing and Display System (MADAP), over a wide-area network connection to these FLB-CWP’s.

As part of the LFS, and in line with the ATM Data as a Service concept, MUAC is also administering second- and third-line maintenance of the working positions, including problem solving and periodic hardware replacement (typically every 6 years), while ANA LUX will be responsible for day-to-day system monitoring.

In order to ensure the smooth operational introduction of the LFS during the second half of 2017, ANA LUX is preparing a dedicated technical and operational briefing for its staff based on material provided by MUAC.

In general, fall-back systems are used as a substitute not only during planned primary system updates, but in particular in the event of any unplanned primary system outage, and are therefore designed to be as different as possible from the primary system. The Maastricht Fallback System (MFS), which LFS is based on, was implemented in-house at MUAC and has been in successful operational use since 2006. MFS, and now also LFS, feed a second video signal to the operator screen, providing an independent air situation picture which an air traffic controller can revert to at any time.

The agreement between ANA LUX and MUAC is based on EUROCONTROL’s user pays principle, which means that the costs of the project are borne by ANA LUX.