New Director MUAC announced at EUROCONTROL

The Director General of EUROCONTROL, Mr Frank Brenner, has announced the appointment of Mr John Santurbano as the new Director of the Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre (MUAC).

Mr Santurbano took up his functions on 1 October 2017. He takes over from Ian Middleton, the current Head of Operations at MUAC, who has been Acting Director since the departure of Jac Jansen, who successfully headed MUAC between 1 April 2012 and 31 March 2017.

Mr Santurbano takes command of one of the best-performing and cost-effective air navigation service providers in Europe. Over the last five years, MUAC has made significant advances, being recently entrusted, next to civil air traffic control, also to operate integrated civil military air traffic control over North Germany and the Netherlands.

MUAC has notably deployed Shared ATS Services at other control centres, whereby the Dutch Air Force, Slovenia Control and the Belgian Air Force rely on our systems from other locations. Today, more than one out of six aircraft over Europe go through MUAC’s airspace, a total of 1.77 million flights a year across 260,000 km2 of airspace.

“John Santurbano is a highly experienced senior manager with hands-on experience managing an ANSP,” said Frank Brenner, Director General of EUROCONTROL. “His strong grounding in operational matters and established strong links with international and national stakeholders in European ATM will make him a valuable member of the senior management team of the Agency, as the team drives forward EUROCONTROL’s objective of improving the performance of the European ATM Network.”

Mr John Santurbano, new Director of the Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre (MUAC)