Adrian is Auckland bureau chief for Aviation Week, based in New Zealand. He covers commercial aviation in the Asia-Pacific region.
Adrian was previously based in Aviation Week’s Washington office for nine years, writing for a range of the group’s publications and covering many aspects of the commercial aviation industry. He has won Australasian and international awards for his aviation writing.
Prior to joining Aviation Week in 2002, Adrian covered aviation industry and policy issues for two other publishing companies in Washington. He has also worked for newspapers in Texas and New Zealand, covering a wide range of topics. Adrian graduated from Auckland University with a degree in history and English in 1992.
Eurocontrol is about to begin the contracting process that will allow industry consortiums to provide air traffic management functions on a pan-European basis. The Centralized Services initiative has been at the planning stage until now, and Eurocontrol is taking the first steps toward making it a reality. The idea is that groups drawn from air navigation service providers (ANSPs), airports, airlines and manufacturers will bid to develop and operate some services, mainly involving the management of data.
While the ground network for the U.S. automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast ( ADS-B ) system is close to completion, the FAA still faces years of work to integrate ADS-B data into air traffic control operations.
Airline participation in the U.S. trial of air-ground data communications is increasing steadily, and airlines are already signing up for the subsequent operational deployment phase of the program. Harris Corp., the prime contractor for the FAA’s Data Comm initiative, is conducting the trial at Newark Liberty International Airport and Memphis International Airport. This involves departure clearances sent to pilots via digital text rather than by voice, which is an initial capability of controller-pilot data-link communications technology.
