Merseyside shipyard and engineering services company Cammell Laird has completed the first year of the second five-year period of its cluster contract with the RFA, it was reported in mid-July.

Cammell Laird CEO John Syvret said the first anniversary marked a period of significant progress and added that the company would now be redoubling its efforts to deliver the best possible service to the RFA. He emphasized that the RFA contract plays a key role in the company’s rapid growth in the commercial marine, offshore wind and civil nuclear markets. He said that the stringent health and safety, project management and quality requirements demanded by the MoD helped significantly in other markets.

RFA Fort Victoria in Cammell Laird’s Birkenhead yard

Aerial photograph of the shipyard with RFA and commercial vessels

Latest apprentice intake with RFA Fort Rosalie

Following the downing of Flight MH17, the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation (CANSO) called on States to share information and intelligence so that airlines can make informed decisions about the safest routes to fly. This announcement was made from Montreal on 29th July. CANSO welcomes the establishment of a high-level Task Force agreed today that will urgently address this issue and the overall safety of aircraft over conflict zones.

In light of recent events impacting the aviation industry the International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations has released a Special Edition of its e-News Broadcast which is partly reproduced here by kind permission of IFALPA – The Global Voice of Pilots / La voix des pilotes dans le monde.

“Given the recent press releases and statements, everyone is outraged at the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, and we should be. This violent act against our air transport system – peacefully engaging in global commerce – cannot be tolerated. Just as we did in the era of hijackings and following events where our own aircraft were used as weapons against us in acts of terror, we must take action.”

On 18th July the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) published a Safety Information Bulletin (SIB), taking into consideration the reported loss of flight MH17 in Eastern Ukraine. (See pdf here).

With the final conference due in September and following the second and final trial campaign which took place at the end of June this year, the I2C (Integrated System for Interoperable sensors & Information sources for Common abnormal vessel behaviour detection and Collaborative identification of threat) integration project has resulted in significant breakthroughs for enhancing sea border protection, it is understood.
Kongsberg Norcontrol’s I2C was implemented to enable automatic identification and tracking of vessels suspected of involvement in, for example, irregular migration, illegal fishing, drug trafficking and looting of cultural heritage.

Kongsberg Norcontrol’s I2C has resulted in significant breakthroughs for
enhancing sea border protection

On 17th July EUROCONTROL was informed that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 17 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in the eastern part of Ukraine.

According to information with EUROCONTROL the aircraft was flying at Flight Level 330 (approximately 10,000 metres/33,000 feet) when it disappeared from the radar. This route had been closed by the Ukrainian authorities from ground to flight level 320 but was open at the level at which the aircraft was flying.

ESA will improve the identification and tracking of vessels anywhere on earth from 2018 under a public-private partnership with LuxSpace of Luxembourg and exactEarth of Canada, signed on 15th July at Farnborough International Air Show in the UK and running until 20th July.

Large vessels and all passenger ships irrespective of size are mandated by the IMO to carry AIS equipment. It transmits the course and speed as well as identification and position information to other vessels and shore stations.

While AIS has been deployed globally, it suffers from a major limitation because earth’s curvature limits its horizontal range to about 74 km from shore. This means that AIS traffic information sent out by vessels’ beacons is available only around coastal zones or on a ship-to-ship basis.

ESA will improve satellite-based ship identification and tracking in partnership with the European Maritime Safety Agency and exactEarth to meet the requirements of users, particularly those of government agencies such as coastal administrations. – illustration reproduced by kind courtesy of ESA ©

Helicopter pilots operating around Britain’s shores and represented by the British Airline Pilots’ Association (BALPA) welcomed the findings of a UK Parliament House of Comons Transport Select Committee report into offshore helicopter safety, issued earlier this month.

General Secretary of BALPA, Jim McAuslan, said, “The Transport Select Committee report adds further weight to the urgent need for safety improvements to prevent accidents and make every offshore flight a safe one.”

The Transport Select Committee in the UK Parliament, House of Commons (Lower House) has indicated that a full, independent, public inquiry must be convened to address whether commercial pressure from oil and gas companies affects the safety of offshore helicopter operations. Furthermore, this inquiry must also examine the role of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), Members of the Transport Select Committee reflected early in July at the time its report was published.

At the request of the Malaysian Government, Australia is leading the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. All the available data indicates the aircraft entered the sea close to a long but narrow arc of the southern Indian Ocean.

The underwater search is focused on a high priority area of up to 60,000 square kilometres of ocean floor – roughly the size of Tasmania.

The complexities surrounding the search cannot be understated. It involves vast areas of the Indian Ocean with only limited known data and aircraft flight information. While it is impossible to determine with certainty where the aircraft may have entered the water, all the available data and analysis indicates a highly probable search area close to a long but narrow arc of the southern Indian Ocean.

Founded in 1977, the European Business Aviation Association (EBAA) is an association for business aviation in Europe. It takes part in regulatory discussions at various European institutions to tackle the challenges that threaten this sector and promotes the community as vital to Europe’s economic development.

It was announced on 15th July from Brussels that EBAA and the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency (GSA) have signed an MoU to promote the wide use of EGNOS – precision-based navigation (PBN) – at regional airports in Europe, following discussions at the European Space Solutions Conference in Prague in June.

Illustration courtesy of the European Business Aviation Association (EBAA) ©

illustration courtesy iStock / Transcom

On 10th July the Transport Select Committee of the UK Parliament’s House of Commons (lower house) announced an inquiry into smaller airports (those with fewer than five million passengers per annum).
The UK Parliament’s Commons Transport Committee has invited written submissions by Friday 3rd October 2014. These may be submitted through www.parliament.uk. Search “Transport Committee” then “Inquiries” followed by “Smaller airports”, or start here.

The 15th IAIN World Congress will be held in the Clarion Congress Hotel, Prague, Czech Republic, from 20th to 22nd October 2015 and a welcome by Professor František Vejražka, Congress Chairman, now appears on the Congress website to be found at: www.iain2015.org,

Registration is due to open in December 2014.

Attached will be found the First Announcement of 1st October 2012 and the Second announcement of 31st December 2013.

The programme for abstracts and paper submissions:

1st September 2014: call for abstracts

1st December 2014: online registration and abstract submission opening

31st January 2015: deadline for abstract submission

15th March 2015: deadline for author registration

31st March 2015: confirmation of abstract acceptance and notification of authors

15th June 2015: paper submission and submission of camera-ready papers deadline

31st July 2015: announcement of paper acceptance

On 1st July, from Washington DC the (US) National Transportation Safety Board’s first investigative report into parasailing safety was issued and found the activity is largely unregulated with serious accidents frequently caused by faulty equipment.

Because of the nature of an activity that often occurs in changing weather with parasailers suspended 500 feet or more above the water’s surface, accidents often result in death or serious injury.

Guidelines to help shipowners comply with a new International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulation requiring ship-specific plans and procedures for the recovery of persons from the water, were launched on 30th June by the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), the global trade association for shipowners.

Under the new SOLAS Regulation, from 1st July 2014 all ships are required to develop plans and procedures identifying both equipment to be used for recovery purposes and measures to minimise the risk to shipboard personnel involved in recovery operations.

The signing ceremony at the end of May for supply and installation of the Transas Full Mission Offshore simulator held in Batumi, Georgia. Seen here are representatives from each of Batumi State Maritime Academy (BSMA) and Transas Marine Black Sea.
Photograph courtesy Batumi State Maritime Academy (BSMA) and Transas Marine Black Sea ©

At the end of May 2014, Batumi State Maritime Academy (BSMA) and Transas Marine Black Sea signed a contract for supply and installation of the Transas Full Mission Offshore simulator. The simulator complex will be one of the most advanced in the Black Sea region, it is claimed.

For this project, Transas will develop simulator areas for three ports of Georgia: Batumi, Poti and Kulevi. In addition, the simulator will use the next generation universal hardware solutions. Use of the touch screen technology together with the dedicated hardware, makes it possible to use virtually any controls on the bridge without compromising training realism.

Towards the end of June the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced from Washington DC plans to issue the largest fine in its history against CTS Technology Co. Ltd., a Chinese electronics manufacturer and online retailer, for allegedly marketing 285 models of signal jamming devices to US consumers for more than two years.

The FCC applied the maximum fine allowed to each jammer model allegedly marketed by CTS resulting in a planned fine of $34,912,500. Said Travis LeBlanc, Acting Chief of the Enforcement Bureau, “All companies, whether domestic or foreign, are banned from marketing illegal jammers in the US. Signal jammers present a direct danger to public safety, potentially blocking the communications of first responders. Operating a jammer is also illegal, and consumers who do so face significant civil and criminal penalties.”

The latest Performance Review Report (PRR) of EUROCONTROL’s Performance Review Commission (PRC) was published in mid-June, giving an independent assessment of European Air Traffic Management’s (ATM) performance in 2013, it was reported from Brussels.

Safety levels are still high in Europe. There have been no fatal air navigation services (ANS)-related accidents since 2010 and the number of reported ANSrelated serious incidents in 2013 was the lowest seen in the past eleven years. “Despite this positive trend, we still need to improve the level of occurrence reporting and the assessment of incidents. The deployment of automatic safety data reporting could further improve trend analysis for the identification of safety risks,” observed Ralph Riedle, PRC Chairman.

Published here by courtesy of EUROCONTROL – © European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (EUROCONTROL). The information contained in this document may not be modified without prior written permission from the Performance Review Commission. The views expressed herein do not necessarily re flect the of ficial views or policy of EUROCONTROL, which makes no warranty, either implied or express, for the information contained in this document, neither does it assume any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of this information.

Nautilus International (formally NUMAST) is the trade union and professional organisation for maritime professionals at sea and ashore. The organisation represent 24,000 shipmasters, officers, officer trainees (cadets) and shipping industry personnel, such as ship pilots, inland navigation workers, vessel traffic services operators (similar to air traffic control), harbourmasters, seafarers in the oil and gas industry, and shore-based staff.

A few hours before Seafarers’ Day Nautilus International has called on the maritime industry to back a campaign to create decent working and living conditions for all seafarers.

IMO’s Day of the Seafarer (25th June) is an annual opportunity for the public to remember that seafarers deliver more than 90% of the goods in the supermarket and say ‘Thank You’ to seafarers. However, the Union would like the industry itself to go one step and further and ensure that all seafarers can enjoy the same standards of living and working conditions that shore-side workers enjoy.

The first edition of IFALPA e-News Broadcast has now been issued. This is the product of feedback received from the member associations of the International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations (IFALPA) and replaces the former IFALPA Daily News.

The e-News Broadcast will, it is understood, be distributed twice each month on the 15th and 30th or the closest business days thereto and will comprise news stories submitted to IFALPA by its members from their respective regions as well as updates on IFALPA’s recent activities.

A Marine Management Organisation report Mapping UK shipping density and routes from AIS (MMO 1066) which outlines an investigation of spatial trends in shipping activity around the UK, authored by ABPmer, has recently been published.

As part of the study, ABPmer developed a series of flexible data processing tools and associated geographic information system (GIS) procedures to decode and display automatic identification system (AIS) data from vessels for the whole of the UK. This work follows on from ABPmer’s previously published MMO1042 Shipping Activity Project, which primarily concerned the South Marine Plan Area.

Kongsberg Norcontrol IT will lead a ground-breaking three-year project called SESAME Straits (Secure, Efficient and Safe maritime traffic Management in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore), to significantly improve the safety and efficiency of ship navigation across the world. An important test-bed for IMO’s e-Navigation implementation strategy, the objective of the SESAME Straits Project is to develop and validate a revolutionary concept for a next generation Ship Traffic Management System (STMS) in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore (SOMS).

The Singapore Port Operation Control Centre uses Kongsberg Norcontrol IT’s C-Scope technology. Source: The Straits Times © Singapore Press Holdings Limited. Reprinted with permission.

The International Harbour Masters’ Association’s Executive Committee has announced its decision that Captain Kevin Richardson is to serve as IHMA President for the period 2014 to 2016.

This announcement was made at the conclusion of the Association’s 9th International Congress hosted by the Ports of Ghent and Zeebrugge, Belgium, from 26th to 30th May 2014.

IHMA President, Captain Kevin Richardson (left) and European Harbour Master Committee Chairman, Captain Amaury de Maupeou

Captain Richardson has had a distinguished career both at sea and ashore spanning some 46 years with the last 27 years at the Port of Dover where he retired as Chief Harbour Master at the end of March 2014. He was proud to serve as the President of the UK Harbour Masters’ Association from 2007 to 2012.

On 5th June the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) released more information about its new approach to the safety regulation of the aviation industry. The CAA had announced its intention to move to a regime of performance based oversight last year, and has now published further details for the airlines, airports and ground handling organisations affected.

Todd Schuett, Training Manager

The IALA 2014 Conference, which took place in La Coruna, Spain, from 25th to 31st May, heard an in-depth paper by Todd Schuett, Training Manager (pictured), Kongsberg Norcontrol IT (KNC) that focused on solutions for reducing stress in the often high pressure VTS operations room environment.

The paper described VTS trials undertaken within D3CoS that sought to establish a relationship between workload and stress levels, and concluded by detailing a prototype co-operative human-machine system that shares data between shore-based and ship-based systems.