The Republic will become the first in Asia-Pacific to have a space-based air-surveillance system in 2018, which provides comprehensive coverage, in contrast to the existing land-based systems.

This negates the need for air-traffic controllers to, for safety reasons, spread aircraft far apart in areas of Singapore’s flight information region (FIR) that cannot be covered by the existing land-based Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) systems. Examples of such areas not under coverage include remote areas and over the oceans, where pilots flying through have to manually feed their flight information back to the control centre. The space-based ADS-B automatically tracks the real-time positions and en-route status information of all ADS-B-equipped aircraft flying within the Singapore FIR. All local carriers are equipped with ADS-B.

The adoption of the space-based system follows an agreement that the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) signed yesterday with Aireon, a supplier of air-traffic surveillance systems. The agreement includes a 12-year subscription to Aireon’s service.

Infrastructure necessary to integrate the service with air-traffic control systems will be set up over the next two years, said the CAAS.

The use of space-based ADS-B will keep Singapore at the forefront of air-traffic management technologies as demand for air travel grows in the region, said CAAS director-general Kevin Shum. “By doing so, we can safely improve the efficiency and capacity of air-navigation services for the areas under our responsibility,” he added. KELLY NG