A Telemadrid report received the ENAIRE Foundation Journalism Award

The panel of judges for the ENAIRE Foundation Awards, which are holding their 23rd edition this year, has awarded the prizes in the three remaining categories: Journalism Award, José Ramón López Villares Award and Luis Azcárraga Award.

The journalist Javier de la Fuente has been given the award for his report "Two flights per minute" shown in the news on Telenoticias 1

Journalism Award

This annual award is in recognition of journalists' work published in our national press and/or broadcast in the media during 2017. The topic presented must be related to general airport transport, navigation, facilities and services. The winner is awarded €12,000.

This year there were 21 nominations and the award went to Javier de la Fuente Alarcón, for his report “Two flights per minute” aired on Telemadrid's Telenoticias 1.

This report, recorded at ENAIRE's Control Centre in Madrid, offers a very instructive account of Spain's air traffic control service, highlighting its air traffic controllers' training and learning. Most of the scenes are shot in a mock environment but real shots inside the cab are also shown. In this report, De la Fuente highlights the importance of the air traffic control service offered by ENAIRE and also gives information about its huge impact on society. More than one million flights a year are controlled from this centre.

The panel of judges praised the report for highlighting the work performed by all ENAIRE's staff, particularly air traffic controllers, who ensure that thousands of passengers safely cross our airspace every day.

Luis Azcárraga Award

It acknowledges work, studies or projects that offer a major contribution to air transport in terms of planning and organisation, economic and administrative management, environmental impact and protection, as well as technological research and innovation. This prize is awarded annually and the winner receives 12,000 euros.

This year 10 papers were nominated and Sergio Ortega Alba won the award for his doctoral thesis: "The characterisation and analysis of energy demand patterns in airports and their energy system modelling".

The judges highlighted its practical objective which is to optimise and save on electrical power consumption in airport installations, thereby reducing environmental impact.

José Ramón López Villares Award

This is an annual prize to reward final bachelor or master degree projects related to air navigation or airports in the following discilplines: Aeronautical and Aerospace Engineering, Civil Engineering, Structural Engineering (especially the branch of Roads, Canals and Ports), and Industrial and Telecommunications Engineering; these projects may be from any university and written in any of our official languages or in English; up to four 3,000 euro awards may be granted.

This year a total of 9 papers were nominated, the airport prize not being awarded. The Air Navigation Specialty Award went to Lucía Meler García for her final master's degree project: "The use of Bayesian networks as a tool to predict and analyse delays in airport operations".

Her work examines the causes of delays during turnaround (the time it takes to prepare an aircraft for its next departure), and proposes a Bayesian network model to evaluate the relationship of the factors influencing this process.  

The work of the ENAIRE Foundation

The ENAIRE Foundation is a cultural organisation linked to ENAIRE. Its objectives include the fostering of aeronautical culture and the preservation, expansion and spreading of ENAIRE's artistic heritage. This heritage is formed of a notable collection of Spanish and Ibero-American art, spanning from the second half of the twentieth century to the present day. It encompasses more than a thousand paintings, sculptures, photographs, graphic art pieces, works on paper and multimedia artworks.

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, 21 control towers and a network of air traffic infrastructure and equipment. In 2017, air traffic handled by ENAIRE transported more than 284 million people on 2 million flights.