Panama airspace facing makeover
PANAMA’S airspace needs reorganizing if the country reorganizing ifrom the annual 5% increase in international traffic says a group of world experts who have been meeting at the University of Technology (UTP).
They came from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), the Boeing factory, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) and the Organization of Air Navigation Service Providers (CANSO).
The director of Panama’s Air Navigation Services Civil Aviation Authority (AAC), Flora Silvera, told the Efe News agency that that “the challenges and issues that we have to solve” are due to the fact that “airspace needs a renewal, a new Configuration based on traffic growth and management and therefore maintain the security and service we provide. “
Silvera in a “Panamanian airspace panorama” presentation respect noted that the growth of traffic “in the last two years was5% per year.”
“We have to divide it into two parts, the upper airspace and the terminal space (landings) that only in that case is 7% per year.”
He said that “more than 300,000 flights” per year pass over Panama and there are are over0,000 landings and take-offs.
“The traffic we are handling is big, but if we had a better flow, or something more systemic, more compact, we could increase that volume without disturbing safety, which is what we really consider,” he said.
Silvera said that some 315 people currently provide air navigation services, but “we are considering that it will need about 100 more people in the short and medium term.”
IATA Vice-President for America, Peter Cerdá, said that Panama “is an air hub” that has a “very important” role for the future of the region
Model country
“Panama is a model country when we talk about aviation, the authorities work very closely with airlines and international entities, the Government has made a lot of effort in that and so we compare it with countries like Singapore, which has a strong aerial culture” said Cerdá.
The challenge is “to support that growth, that demand, which in the next 20 years in Latin America will grow twice”, and for that “we have to go and make sure” that Panama has “the infrastructure and capacity to Grow” he said.
He stressed that in the last two years Panama has “improved a lot”, and the country at world level “is in the 16th position, equal to New Zealand and several European countries”, and has to work on “the efficiency of airspace use “.
