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.
The FAA is almost ready to begin the nationwide rollout of the new en route air traffic control system that is one of the crucial foundations of the NextGen modernization effort. While the En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM) program has endured timetable slips, the system has been operating continuously at the Salt Lake City center for a couple of months, says FAA Chief Operating Officer Hank Krakowski. It also has been in full-time operation at Seattle. ERAM is the core system that will be used to control traffic at FAA’s 22 en route centers.
While Airbus’s new air traffic management (ATM) unit will be expected to cover its costs, its real value to the company is strategic, says the unit’s senior executive. Airbus calculates that one-third of its aircraft order book is destined to replace older aircraft, and about two-thirds is for fleet growth. This means that increasing the capacity of the ATM system is vital to Airbus, says Eric Stefanello, CEO of the Airbus ProSky subsidiary and Airbus’s senior VP-ATM.
Sensis Corp. has won a contract to deploy a wide-area multilateration (WAM) network in Sweden, which could become the first nationwide use of WAM for air traffic control surveillance. The contract will initially cover WAM deployment in two regions–the Stockholm area and another in the north of the country. The five remaining regions in Swedish airspace are included in contract options, Sensis executives tell Aviation Week at the ATM Global show in Amsterdam. Sensis is not revealing the value of its contract with Swedish air navigation service provider LFV.
