Final sprint

According to the plan Namibian airspace above Flight Level 145 will be surveillance controlled in two weeks. These two weeks will be busy weeks…

The paper work is more or less finished, but they need the final adjustments and approvals. Work has been done on the “Station Standing Instructions”, the “Letters of Procedures” with neigbouring FIR:s, on AIP amendments, NOTAM:s etc. They are all connected so a late change in one place can cause a lot of extra work.

But if Fredrik looks this happy I think there is good hope…

The Eurocat-X is also very close to being ready for operationsl use. This week our “Eurocat guru” from South Africa, Greg Fisher, is here to make the final fine-tuning.

Here we find Greg and Johan looking rather relaxed so my guess is that they have everything under control…

Training is going on five to six days a week. This week the first two controllers will finish their training, with the next six following next week and the final two finishing a few days after the operations starts. Brian Likando below is seen doing the most busy of the exercises with Peter taking notes on the result.

The last exercises are both busy and complex with “degraded modes” operations with different technical problems causing problems. This means busy times not only for the trainees in the controller position but also in the pseudo pilots position. Here we see George Kizza handling a lot of aircraft.

The trainees also finds that traffic has the bad habit of more and more often trying to reach the same points at the same level. So concentration is necessary – both for Philippine Lundama and for her instructor Ben.

So, let us hope that we all manage to keep the good work going all the time remaining – and for the time after that…