UAE GCAA’s Ground-Breaking SWIM Gateway Hits Major Milestone with Successful First Delivery by Snowflake Software

Today at the World ATM Congress in Madrid, it was announced that Snowflake Software have successfully achieved a major milestone in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) System Wide Information Management (SWIM) Gateway Project. SWIM Gateway is a first of its kind solution designed for the GCAA and built by Snowflake Software, supporting the GCAA’s vision of being a “leading, safe, secure and sustainable civil aviation system”.

Snowflake Software successfully installed the SWIM Gateway in the Sheik Zayed Air Navigation Centre’s (SZC) Research and Dataset System (RDS) environment in Abu Dhabi. As a non-disruptive solution, the installation resulted in zero downtime to operational systems, ensuring a seamless transition for the GCAA. SWIM Gateway enables the GCAA and its stakeholders to align with several of the Aviation System Block Upgrades (ASBU) within the International Civil Aviation Organization's (ICAO) Global Air Navigation Plan (GANP).

Snowflake Software’s Laminar Data platform provides SWIM Gateway with end-to-end flight data management; the system receives, validates and publishes the most up-to-date flight planning and strategic tactical flow management data, enabling effective information exchange amongst all stakeholders in the region. SWIM Gateway receives the GCAA’s live FDPS, AMAN, DFLOW and ATS data feeds amongst others, to consume and output data in accordance with SWIM standards. By consolidating multiple data feeds, SWIM Gateway automates contextual validation of the flight plans throughout its Strategic, Pre-tactical and Tactical phases.

Ahmed Al Jallaf, the Assistant Director General of ANS at GCAA said: “Information sharing for a collaborative environment has always been on top of our agenda.  Implementation of innovative ideas is the key here.  This project is one of the many initiatives in this direction which will help us to jointly achieve more with our customers and stakeholders”. 

 “There is plenty of data produced by every player in the aviation industry.  Some of the data are manual entries by human beings while others are computer systems generated that includes legacy and sophisticated systems.  All this data has to be collected, validated and presented in a timely manner in a common form as useful information that will help everyone to deliver their tasks efficiently. This is the motivation behind the SWIM Gateway project.” 

The installation was formally accepted by Hamad Rashid Al Belushi, Director of ATM at the GCAA and Alexis James Brooker, COO at Snowflake Software. Present at the SZC to receive the formal acceptance, Alexis James Brooker said: “I’ve been seriously impressed with the joint GCAA and Snowflake team’s approach to the successful installation and site test for this system. It represents a major step towards the GCAA SWIM Gateway vision becoming a reality”. Snowflake Software has also installed the SWIM Gateway at the GCAA’s Area Control Center (ACC) and Emergency ACC (EACC), with formal acceptance due to take place in the following months.

Hamad Rashid Al Belushi (Director of ATM, GCAA) & Alexis James Brooker (COO, Snowflake Software) during formal acceptance ceremony