ENAIRE puts satellite approach into service at Valencia Airport

Valencia is the third airport in Spain to use the European EGNOS systemENAIRE, the company of the Fomento Group that manages air navigation in Spain, has put new approach procedures into service at Valencia Airport, based on EGNOS, the European satellite navigation service. This represents an improvement for both airlines and passengers, as it establishes new airport arrival options.

To carry out this project, ENAIRE has signed a working agreement between Ferronats, the air traffic control service provider at Valencia Airport, and ESSP, a company that develops the EGNOS system in Europe, owned by ENAIRE and other air navigation managers from Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Switzerland.

These new manoeuvres designed by ENAIRE do not depend on terrestrial radio navigation, which translates into a cost-efficient alternative compared with conventional approaches, which are based on land systems. To carry out these new landing procedures based on the use of satellite navigation, the aircraft need to be duly equipped and their crew must be prepared with the relevant training.

This way, ENAIRE increases the efficiency of airline operations and accessibility to the various runway heads, whilst also improving the airport's security. Thanks to this activity, we have continued to move forward in meeting the requirements of the Performance-Based Navigation (PBN) Implementation Plan, laid out in ENAIRE’s '2020 Flight Plan'.

To allow airlines to land using this method, ENAIRE has elaborated the necessary safety evaluations, which were approved by the Spanish Aviation Safety Agency (AESA).

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With the implementation of these operations in Valencia, Spain now has a total of five airports equipped with procedures based on satellite navigation: Almería, Seve Ballesteros-Santander, Fuerteventura and Málaga-Costa del Sol; the latter has a satellite navigation system called GBAS, for carrying out precise operations in low-visibility conditions. Since 2 February, Valencia has started using these new landing procedures supported by satellite navigation, including manoeuvres based on EGNOS, making it the third airport in Spain to use this European system after Almería and Seve-Ballesteros Santander.

Using these advances, ENAIRE can provide the airlines that use these airports with approaches based on satellite navigation from the pre-existing entry points. This is all possible without having to set up additional land infrastructure, which represents financial savings and operational benefits as a result.

About ENAIRE

The public corporate entity ENAIRE is a company designated by the Ministry of Public Works to manage the fourth largest airspace in Europe in terms of traffic through 5 control centres, 22 control towers and a network of air traffic infrastructure and equipment. The air traffic managed by ENAIRE transports over 250 million passengers in 2 million flights.