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Dubai / WAM
The General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) announced that on December 7, in a ground-breaking and historic moment, the UAE will implement one of the largest airspace changes the region has ever seen.
Specifically, the date will signal the completion of the UAE Airspace Restructuring Project (ARP), which will see the Emirates Flight Information Region (FIR) transformed into the world’s first airspace structure to be completely based on Performance Based Navigation (PBN) with a Navigation Specification of RNAV-1 (GNSS).
This restructuring is the culmination of years of extensive analysis, development and collaboration across the UAE aviation community to enable the evolution of one of the most advanced air traffic management systems in the world. This has required extensive co-operation from the GCAA Sheikh Zayed Air Navigation Centre, Dubai Air Navigation Services, Abu Dhabi Airports Company, Abu Dhabi Department of Transport, Ras al-Khaimah Department of Civil Aviation, Sharjah Department of Civil Aviation, Fujairah Department of Civil Aviation, as well as many more aviation stakeholders.
The UAE ARP was designed to meet multiple objectives, all of which have been achieved in line with global best practices. Saif Al Suwaidi, Director-General of GCAA, said, “The implementation of the ARP is not only impressive from a technical perspective but to achieve collaboration on such a large scale required teams of project management and technical experts with dedicated representation from the six UAE ANSPs (GCAA, dans, Abu Dhabi ANS, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah and Sharjah), fifteen core agencies (including the UAE National Airlines, UAE Airport Authorities, UAE Military, regulatory representation, IATA and the National Centre of Meteorology and Seismology) and the five surrounding international air traffic service providers. I would like to thank all of those involved for their hard work and dedication to getting us to this historic moment in UAE aviation history.