20 April 2009
The CAA and NATS have announced that ‘department responsible for the production of the UK’s aeronautical charts and data will transfer from the CAA to NATS later this year.’
The move has been done to fall in line with ICAO recommendations that service provision tasks should be separated from regulatory ones.
The department is currently part of the CAA’s Directorate of Airspace Policy.
One of the aims of the transfer is to avoid duplication of knowledge between the two organisations; another is to ‘improve the integrity of the flow of aeronautical data that transfers between the two organisations and it will help to eradicate any inconsistencies in the data sets that currently exist between the CAA and NATS in providing the services.’
NATS’ Lance Stuart said that NATS ‘Will be able to develop the charting service to a level that the CAA in its regulatory role cannot.’, and would involve the construction of a single database.
A NATS spokesman told FLYER that it was too early to say exactly what developments would take place.
