Civil/military cooperation

Best practice

The 2009 G8 Summit was held in Italy on July 2009. It was initially expected in La Maddalena (Sardinia), but for

Humanitarian reason the Summit has moved to L’Aquila, that was hit by a big earthquake 3 months earlier, to draw

the attention to the area wounded by the disaster.

The planning of this “big event” and the consequent civil military coordination had to be done in very short time.

For security reasons (under provision of art. 793 Air Navigation Acts) during “G8” Summit, restrictions were applied to

air traffic due to temporary interdiction of some areas which affected the airspace of Rome FIR/UIR, Brindisi FIR/UIR,

Roma TMA, Pescara CTR, Roma CTR, and Amendola CTR. All the restrictions were indicated in terms of lateral limits,

vertical limits, dates and times.

The scenario initially identified was based on a “No fly zone” extending from GND to FL 280 within 30 Nautical Miles

radius from L’Aquila and a “No VFR zone” from GND to FL 195 within a 40 NM radius from L’Aquila (see fig. 1). As

events slowly unfolded, supplementary military requirements pertaining security issues were also to be taken into

account. The overall result had soon developed in a highly critical scenario for both GAT and OAT flights (see fig. 2).

While the establishment of the “No VFR zone” was easily acceptable, the “No fly zone” would have caused a big

impact to civil air traffic, In particular, the zone would interfere with a big part of Roma TMA causing a “domino

effect” on traffic to/from Roma, Napoli and Pescara airports and all traffic overflying the area up to FL 350.

With this in mind, a set of possible mitigations were envisaged, following a thorough impact analysis for both civil and

military air traffic to reach a feasible solution by evaluating the best rerouting options/time of operations. (see fig. 3).

This finally resulted in reshaping the “No fly zone”, significantly reducing the impact on civil air traffic while still

accommodating military requirements (see fig. 4).

Two added key elements made the reshape of the “no fly zone” possible:

• intense activity involving all partners, including CFMU in the preplanning;

• real time coordination that, through additional flexibility, allowed the complete harmonization of G8 traffic

with the domestic and international traffic.

All this work, concluded in 35 days, has been successfully implemented thanks to the high level coordination between

ENAV (the Italian Service Provider), A.M. (Italian Air Force) and Enac (the Civil Aviation Authority). The 4 Italian ACCs

were able to optimally protect the interest of domestic and international traffic during the Big Event while allowing

the Military to carry out their special ad-hoc duty in a safe environment.

The amount of operational traffic that visited L’Aquila airport, (normally a tourist airport) was about equal to larger

airports like Torino. LIRF, LIRN and LICJ were the most affected aerodromes. Mainly flights that departed from Italy

were affected. Most penalised flows were Italy-Romania and Italy-Tunis. Most penalised AOs: AZA, RYR, ISS and ADH.

The new layout of military areas and the tactical coordination reduced GAT impact to 269 flights which corresponded

to a 55% reduction of penalised flights. This result was mainly achieved by decreasing the area by ±20NM horizontally

and 6000 ft vertically, while displacing and adding the remnant military areas in other less congested sectors.

A strategic outlook of impacted GAT traffic thru the day. 00

00

0100

0200

0300

0400

0500

0600

0700

0800

0900

1000

1100

1200

1300

1400

1500

1600

1700

1800

1900

2000

2100

2200

2300

0

5

10

15

20

G8aquila340

Time

Nbr

of f

light

s

Entry rate

INST

AVG TIME

INITIAL SCENARIO

(fig. 1)

FULL SCALE SCENARIO

(fig. 2)

EVALUATION OF IMPACT & REROUTING OPTIONS

(fig. 3)

FINAL SCENARIO

(fig. 4)

Considerations

The G8 event coordination activity satisfied many Principles regarding all three Airspace Management levels. Emphasis

has been put on cooperation between all the stakeholders involved, and mainly on the Civil and Military service

providers.

All measures adopted during the G8 are normally used as strategic pre-tactical and tactical actions to mitigate the

impact on civil traffic during such relevant events. In these cases ad-hoc national ASM tools, together with CFMU

software were exploited to the maximum extent possible in stimulating and realizing effective management of

significant events.

Critical success factors to reduce the impact on civil air traffic during these Big Events were:

• Stakeholder Coordination by strategic, pretactical and tactical point of view

• Real time coordination ACC - SCCAM (ITAF “Italian Airforce Control and Coordination Service”) – FMP to

accommodate civil military needs

• Necessity to settle clear agreements especially when in the area multinational air forces are involved.

• Need of AIP supplement to publish a scenario for appropriate tactical and pre-tactical management actions

with the aim to limit the impact on general air traffic flows.

• NOTAM publication where necessary.

• Clear roles and responsibilities of all actors involved in the process.

• Information disseminated to organizations not directly involved in the activity but neighboring with the

scenario and potentially affected by side-effect.

• Increase the exchange of information with CFMU to keep delays to a minimum.

• Need of a safety assessment mapped with the existing safety requirements.

Conclusions

All the actions taken and all the airspace management methods experienced during the G8 Big Event, achieved

positive results and provided useful lessons-learned to a national approach for the dynamic use of airspace, which

significantly contributes to:

• facilitating the conduct of military training and operational missions in national airspace, with as less impact

as possible on GAT flights;

• making GAT traffic flows, affected by the development of areas temporarily dedicated to military operations,

subject to targeted interventions and timetables;

• allowing flights to be rescheduled onto suggested routings and/or choices between the most convenient

routes;

• promoting effective cooperation with ATFCM.

ENAV is the Italian Company for Air Navigation Services

ITAF is the Italian Airforce

Marine One approaching Preturo Runway

U.S.A. President Obama

Tridimensional view of the site shown by ENAV Flight Procedure design system

Preturo airport Strip

Preturo TWR (LIAP)

Aircraft lined up on taxiway