6.7 Contingency planning and degraded mode procedures

As stipulated by point 5.1. recital (f) in Annex VIII to Regulation (EU) 2018/1139, an ATS provider — ‘shall establish and implement a contingency plan covering emergency and abnormal situations that may occur in relation to its services, including in the case of events which result in significant degradation or interruption of its operations’. Furthermore, Regulation (EU) 2017/373 [4], ATM/ANS.OR.A.070 complemented by GM1 ATM/ANS.OR.A.070 in Annex III to EASA ED Decision 2017/001/R [10], stipulates that a service provider ‘shall have in place contingency plans for all the services it provides in the case of events which result in significant degradation or interruption of its operations.’ In addition, degraded mode procedures for events which would not necessarily lead to a significant degradation or interruption of the operation should be properly assessed and developed, as part of the assessment of the change to the ATM functional system (refer to Regulation (EU) 2017/373 [4]), in order to ensure a continued safe service provision in case of e.g. partial system failure/degradation. Also note that — in reference to ICAO Annex 11, Attachment C, point 2 — any contingency arrangement is supposed to be temporary in nature, i.e. to be used only for limited time periods, until the ordinary services and facilities can be resumed. With regard to remote aerodrome ATS, the contingency and degraded mode procedures should be adapted/designed to the specific local conditions and the specific technical architecture/design, taking into consideration elements such as: the use of light signals and emergency flares; alerting in case of failure conditions; impact on the service provision in case of major failure; and the management of existing traffic in the scenario of major or complete failure of an RTM or RTC. The following items represent examples of situations for which contingency or degraded mode procedures may need to be applied: Events related to visual presentation and binocular functionality, including: unreliable visual presentation, e.g. ‘blank screen’, frozen presentation, or video latency delay above the maximum value allowed; partial or full loss/degradation of visual presentation, loss/degradation of binocular functionality; technical enablers intended to increase ATCO/AFISO situational awareness (refer to Section 5.2.8.1). Events related to other system aspects, including loss/degradation of: communication (i.e. aeronautical mobile service, aeronautical fixed service and surface movement service); signalling lamp; meteorological information; information and/or management of aeronautical ground lights; information and/or management of navigation aids; alarm management; aerodrome sound reproduction (if available); and other systems such as ATS surveillance information, flight plan and control data, etc. For the events listed above, each specific element should be considered in isolation, but also in combination with other possible failures and how they interact. In addition, special consideration of the need to have a spare RTM and associated staff, if suitable, should be taken to reduce the likelihood of service interruption due to the failure of the RTM.