Mr. Nikolche Taseski, President of Management Board of M-NAV and ANS Executive Director and Mrs. Jasminka Gocevska, ATM Expert forInternational Collaboration in ANS participated at GateOne CEO Brainstorming Meeting held in Budapest on 20-th of September. Participants from thirteen Air Navigation Service Providers from the region have attended the meeting.

Initially, during the meeting, the future positioning of GateОne as well as the method of operation of the said common platform were brainstormed by the attendees. Each of the Executive Directors of ANSPs, partners of GateОne Platform expressed their position and view about the already established common vision and mission of the alliance.

Mr. Kornél Szepessy, the Chairman of GateОne through presentation enabled the attendees to be reminded of the original purposes to which the alliance strives for, the enhancement of the network functions, knowledge sharing,  establishing coordination platform, joint strategic positioning and objectives and advocacy – based on consensus.

Furthermore, by members` inputs, the essential challenges that directly affect the future of the said platform and the need the same ones to be redefined were highlighted during the meeting. Fear from overlapping with CANSO and with other alliances can cause conflict of opinions, lack of commitment, rigid decision-making were also taken into account. The presentation of SWOT analyses of GateОne enabled the attendees to obtain clearer image about the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

With an aim of reaching a common understanding of the future directions and positioning of GateOne Platform, the members were divided into 4 groups and by releng brainstorming each group made appropriate conclusions that were further considered as direction for further functioning of the platform.

Members of GateОne accepted the proposal conclusions, i.e. in future the method of advocacy when voting to be changed from consensual to two-thirds majority, all members to have active status, the main focus of the future functioning of the said platform to be real content and the actual topics and issues. The following conclusion has arisen out of the joint position of the attendees at the one-day meeting, as soon as possible GCC to prepare proposal changes of the GateОne Agreement into which all adopted changes related to the method of voting will be incorporated and submitted to CEOs in order to adopt them during the forthcoming meeting in Sofia. At the same time, there was a suggestion all members to submit proposal changes and amendments regarding the strategy, the vision and the mission of GateОne.

On 6^th of September, Ms. Irena Kalichanin, Deputy Director of ANS and Mr. Ivo Paskalov, Head of ATCO Training Center in M-NAV made a working visit to the Training Center in Jerez, Spain where the second group of our students currently undergo training and had a meeting with Mr. Oscar Sordo, the Director of Flight Training Europe, S.L. and with ATCO Instructors as well.

Following the conducted process of selecting candidates for Air Traffic Controllers and following the completion of public procurement procedure, M-NAV signed a Contract on Training the Second Group of 6 candidates for Air Traffic Controllers, 5 out of them shall acquire Area Control  (ACS) Surveillance rating and 1 candidate shall acquire ADI/TWR and APP.

The training of the said candidates commenced on 04^th of August 2019 in Jerez Spain, in the Training Center – Flight Training Europe, S.L.

Flight Training Europe, S.L. has over 30 years of experience in training aviation personnel. FTEJerez has a reputation of one of the leading and most exclusive training organizations in the field of aviation. Over the years FTEJerez has established and consolidated a wide scope of first class aviation training services and a complete portfolio of training Air Traffic Controllers.

Currently, our students are in the phase of taking the theoretical exams of the Basic ATCO Training and the results from the exams achieved so far are excellent. In accordance with the Contract,  the training of M-NAV`s candidates shall end at the beginning of November of this year as far as the five students that shall acquire ACS rating are concerned, and it shall end in December regarding the candidate undergoing  training for acquiring ADI/TWR and APP rating.

We wish our trainees a successful completion of the training and continuation with great results in future!

On 25^th of July, in Skopje Mr. Nikolche Taseski, the Executive Director of ANS and Mr. Aleksandar Palcevski, the Executive Director of CNS had an official meeting with Mr. Patrick Ky,  the Executive Director of the European Aviation Safety Agency – EASA.  Due to having been invited by PhD Tomislav Tuntev, CAA Director, the meeting was held in CAA`s premises, also  Mrs. Annika Haug, Head of EASA Executive Director`s Office,  Mr. Alper Ersoy and Mr. Nejat Kurt, the Managers of TAV Macedonia attended the meeting. The visit of High-Level EASA delegation is of crucial importance for all aviation stakeholders in the country.

EASA Director has shown a special interest for both the targets and the challenges posed by the aviation Authorities in collaboration  with the Government and with the other aviation stakeholders in the country.

Putting the light on the position and the role of EASA in providing safe and secure European air transport, Ky emphasised that the EASA model proved to be an extremely successful and unique model within the European framework, because as he said, in the past, there was no other model, except for the FAA model of the United States of America.

Today, every new model that is being developed worldwide takes over the essentials of EASA. Countries of Asia and Middle East are an example for this and they have decided to follow the model of EASA, Ky underlined.

At the meeting, the direct EASA involvement in the process of putting into operation the new ATM system  was of special importance for M-NAV and through CAA it will assist in ensuring more safe and more expeditious implementation of the system. Further,  it was discussed about the current development in the area of regulating the unmanned aircrafts and about the need of establishing a training centre for air traffic controllers, for pilots of both aircraft and unmanned aircraft  and for other aviation personnel.

EASA will be ultimately committed to make conditions for establishing such a centre by following the example of Poland where such an academy successfully operates.

The importance of cyber security and passing a regulation related to it was also discussed during the meeting.

At the beginning of the summer season, for the second time M-NAV has broken the record for the number of flights over Macedonian sky! For the first time, a record-breaking number of a total of 1042 flights over Macedonian sky was recorded on 29th of the June of the year and again yesterday, on 06th of July a total of 1091 flights were recorded!

Just like the last year, also in the last Saturday of the month of June, the traffic exceeded the record number of flights set in the previous year. Тhe record so far set last year on August 11th, 2018 was a total of 1028 flights, so first the record was exceeded for 14 flights while yesterday on 6th of July, the record was exceeded for 63 flights!

It shall be taken into account that achievement of these records did not produce a minute of delay for the users of the Airspace.

The trend of continuous air traffic growth continued in the first half of the year of 2019 as well when an air traffic increase of 18.5% of the total traffic was recorded. During the first six months of 2019, M-NAV handled a total of 97 883 operations while in the year of 2018 it handled 82 619 operations.

When compared to 2017 a growth of 34% was recorded but when compared to 2016 there was substantial growth of even 59.3%.

Regarding the total traffic, the peak month is the month of February when it was recorded a total air traffic increase of 25.7% monthly when compared to previous year.

It is expected the air traffic increase trend to continue in the rest of the year, i.e. it is expected the already set record to be broken.

Maintaining a high level of professional competence and the devotion of all employees of M-NAV enabled the air traffic growth and it adds to the fact that the increasing number of air traffic has been handled with the same number of Air Traffic Controllers in the recent 10 years, but for the purpose of maintaining continuous performance we impatiently await for the new colleagues who currently undergo training.

M-NAV expresses thanks and congratulations to Air Traffic Controllers and to all professionals in the Company who continuously contribute to company progress and development besides the pressure arising of the ceaseless attempts to worsen the image of M-NAV.

Mr. Nikolche Taseski, ANS Executive Director and President of Management Board of M-NAV alongside with CEOs of 13 ANSPs, members of the Gate One Coordination Platform, attended the eighth Gate One Meeting held in Bucharest on 3rd of June 2019.
At one of the most crucial meetings in the aviation industry, the most sensitive topics of European ATM for the time being were discussed while agreeing on common positions on the Airspace Architecture Study and the Report of Wise Persons Group which are documents that play prominent role in the forthcoming shaping of Single European Sky legislation. All Gate One partners had an open discussion about the taken position regarding the above-mentioned documents and also the part of the discussion was devoted to the method and effects of their implementation.
Further, the discussions were oriented towards promoting the Gate One platform and recognizing this group as an equal partner in the future policy-making and regulations that would be based on Airspace Architecture Study. M-NAV GOJSC alongside with the other ANSPs from the region have been facing a rapid air traffic growth in comparison with the past period, but they successfully accommodate it thanks to adaptability of the demand. At the meeting, the light was also on clear definition of the target capacity and how it will be achieved through the proposed solutions. Being a partner of Gate One Coordination Platform, M-NAV GOJSC equally is committed to promoting and achieving system interoperability, enhanced safety and implementation of new technologies.
Further during the visit, the next day on 4th of June Mr. Nikolche Taseski, the ANS Executive Director, alongside with other attendees from M-NAV GOJSC attended SESAR Delivering the Future in Aviation Conference that brought them an unique opportunity to take part in debates on how Europe copes with the challenge of air traffic growth and deployment of new and developmental projects that aim to achieve ATM modernization.
SESAR Deployment Manager, SESAR Joint Undertaking, representatives of various EU institutions, European Defence Agency, ANSPs and representatives of a great number of airlines, through an open panel discussion, had an opportunity to debate about SESAR benefits and the aim was to bring more closely to the involved ATM stakeholders all projects that enable European ATM to accommodate the rapid air traffic growth at affordable cost while increasing safety and environmental protection. Also, during the debate SESAR DM presented its achievements in measuring performance in 6 key areas: capacity, operational efficiency, service cost, environment, safety and security.