ERA has signed a new contract to deliver surface MLAT solutions to three German airports

Pardubice, July 27th, 2015 ERA announced that it had been awarded a contract to deliver MLAT/ADS-B systems to provide surface ATM surveillance at three major airports in Germany. The whole project is called Flughafen Multilateration-Systeme by ERA and includes Cologne/Bonn, Düsseldorf and Stuttgart international airports. ERA will provide Air Traffic Control solutions based on its tried and tested NEO composite multisensor system. The proposed installations fulfil all the specific demands required by the tendering process which ERA won this spring. The contract was assigned in half of May; the first completion of the systems is expected in two years period.

The customer DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH chose their solution of multilateration and ADS-B systems in order to meet the challenge of the air traffic management of these busy airports having seen an immense increase in traffic. It has inspired the need to implement additional airport surface surveillance to already used SSRs to mitigate the risk of runway incursions and other ground traffic related incidents.

The customer’s trust in ERA´s abilities is based on positive experience the German ANSP has had with ERA systems flawlessly working for one decade at other important German airports: Berlin, Hamburg and Munich. In 2011 ERA has also been granted special approval certificate E1 from the Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt authority (part of the Ministry of Transport and the Digital Infrastructure of the Federal Republic of Germany).

“The selection of ERA is the result of the tendering procedure. ERA complies with the requirements of the Request for Proposal (RFP) and afforded the best price quality ratio”, stated  Egon Koopmann, DFS.

 All the proposed systems are based on central time architecture, which is ERA´s own invention. All together the delivery for three airports will consist of 82 receiving stations. They are designed according to RFP requirements and the ED-117 standard for surface systems. The team of ERA experts already carried out a site survey and has chosen proper locations for the MLAT stations. Additionally vehicle tracking units SQUIDS are another essential part of the contract. The final completions of the systems followed by the Site Acceptance Tests are planned for 2017, 2018 respectively.