Skyguide

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SKYGUIDE, Swiss stock corporation for civil and military air traffic control

logo
legal form Corporation
founding 1922
Seat Meyrin (near Geneva , Switzerland (previously in Bern ))
management Alex Bristol
( CEO ),
Walter T. Vogel
( Chairman of the Board )
Number of employees 1419.4 ( FTE as of December 31, 2017)
sales 470.3 million CHF (2017)
Branch aviation
Website www.skyguide.ch

Skyguide (officially SKYGUIDE, Swiss corporation for civil and military air traffic control , English SKYGUIDE, Swiss civil and military Air Navigation Services Limited ) is the air traffic control company that monitors the Swiss airspace and the adjacent airspace.

It is formally a public limited company under Swiss law , which is responsible for the security of the entire airspace of Switzerland and the adjacent airspace in Germany, Austria, France and Italy on behalf of and owned by the Confederation. In Swiss airspace, this includes both civil and military air traffic control - the latter on behalf of and with payment from the Swiss Air Force .

The company is subject to the supervision of the Federal Department for the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communication (DETEC). The main shareholder (and only relevant shareholder) with 99.94 percent of the shares and 100 percent of the voting rights in Skyguide share capital is the Swiss Confederation.

In 2017, Skyguide monitored around 3,390 flights per day in accordance with instrument flight rules. Over the entire year, this corresponds to 1,237,098 IFR flights. In the same year, Skyguide generated sales of around 470 million Swiss francs. Swiss air traffic control operates at 14 locations across Switzerland.

Leadership and staff

An air traffic controller from the Swiss Skyguide in the tower of Zurich Airport

The staff at Skyguide is divided into around 1,400 full-time positions and around 1,500 employees, around two thirds of them in the operational area of ​​air traffic control, around a quarter in the technical service, the majority in administration . The proportion of women is around 27 percent. Women have been represented on the Skyguide management team for the first time since 2018 - partly because the head of corporate communications has recently become part of the management team.

Since July 1, 2017, Skyguide has been headed by Alex Bristol , the previous Chief Operating Officer (COO). His predecessor since October 1, 2007 was Daniel Weder . On January 12, 2017, it became known that Weder would step down on June 30, 2017 and take early retirement at the age of 60. The Chairman of the Board of Directors is Walter T. Vogel, who is the full-time president of Aebi Schmidt Holding AG (ASH) from Peter Spuhler .

According to Art. 8 of the Ordinance on the Air Navigation Service (VFSD), Skyguide “ensures that air traffic control operations are not impaired by strikes, lockouts, boycotts or other combat measures” and “concludes collective employment contracts with their staff whenever possible ”. The social partnership at Skyguide is divided into two parts:

  • The administrative, operational and technical staff (AOT staff), i.e. all employees who are neither air traffic controllers nor cadres, are made more public by the unions Si-Tra (Syndicat indépendant du trafic aérien) and Syndicom as well as the Swiss Association of Personnel Services (VPOD) represented. The current collective agreement was concluded on February 12, 2016, but only signed by Syndicom on the employee side. Si-Tra and VPOD, who mainly represent Skyguide employees in Geneva, refused to sign this GAV.
  • The air traffic controllers at Skyguide are represented by the trade unions Aerocontrol Switzerland , Association du Personnel de la Tour de Contrôle et du Terminal Genève (APTC) and Skycontrol, as well as by the Federal Staff Association (PVB). The first three unions are the Swiss Air Traffic Controllers' Associations (SwissATCA). Since January 1, 2017, Skyguide air traffic controllers had no contract after negotiations on a new CLA had failed. In June / July 2018 the members of the three trade unions Aerocontrol Switzerland, APTC and PVB then approved a new CLA - mediated by the Chambre des relations collectives de travail (CRCT) in Geneva - by a majority, while the majority of the members of Skycontrol rejected it has been. Skycontrol subsequently announced that it would go on strike from July 23 to 27, 2018. Skycontrol justified the strike, among other things, with the increase in the management staff at the expense of the air traffic control officers, which is increasing from year to year, while Skyguide described the planned strike as "unjustified and irresponsible" and tried to prevent the strike by legal means. On July 17, 2018, it was announced that the strike that had been announced would not take place after Skycontrol and Skyguide had agreed on new talks.

Partners and European cooperation

Important partners of Skyguide are the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), Eurocontrol (European Organization for the Safety of Aviation) and the Civil Air Navigation Services Organization (CANSO) as well as the Swiss Air Force . In Belgium , Skyguide has also had a subsidiary called Skynav since the end of 2000 , which serves as a link to the European Union (EU) and is organized as a holding company. Another subsidiary, SkySoft-ATM SA, with its headquarters - like Skyguide - in Meyrin, operates software development.

Switzerland, and thus also Skyguide, is participating in the Single European Sky (SES) project of the European Commission . The project aims to harmonize the air traffic control system in Europe and thereby increase the overall efficiency of the airspace structure that is still highly fragmented today. A prerequisite for this is the formation of larger, contiguous blocks of airspace. The airways are to be geared more towards the needs of airspace users and less towards national borders. The reorganization of the European airspace is considered necessary in order to be able to cope with the forecast increase in traffic efficiently.

A total of nine European airspace blocks were created as part of SES. One of them is the Functional Airspace Block Europe Central (FABEC), the functional block of airspace in Central Europe . Around 55 percent of European air traffic is handled there, which is around 5.3 million flights per year. In December 2010 the six member states (Belgium, Germany, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland) signed an international treaty, which laid the legal basis for FABEC.

Tasks and locations

Civil duties

Skyguide headquarters in Geneva
Skyguide location in Wangen near Dübendorf with the civil Area Control Center (ACC) Zurich and the military Air Defense & Direction Center (ADDC)

The most important locations are the two civil Area Control Centers (ACC) at the Dübendorf military airfield in Wangen and at Geneva Airport in Cointrin , near which - in Meyrin - is the Skyguide headquarters.

The control center in Geneva is responsible for the airspace in western Switzerland, the airspace over the French Alps and a small part of the Italian airspace that lies on the border with France . The control center at the Wangen site went into operation in February 2009. In Wangen, also located in addition to the air traffic control center, which is responsible for the airspace of the German Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Southern Germany aeronautical information service (Aeronautical Information Service AIS). In Wangen, Skyguide also operates training rooms, three tower simulators and training rooms for real-time training of air traffic controllers, also for employees of other air traffic control in Europe and the Middle East. The Air Force Operations Center, the Air Defense & Direction Center (ADDC), is located in the same building in Wangen.

Further locations are at the airports in Bern-Belp , Buochs , Grenchen, Lugano-Agno and St.Gallen-Altenrhein as well as at numerous mixed civil-military or purely military airfields. These include Alpnach , Dübendorf , Emmen , Locarno, Meiringen, Payerne and Sion .

On the airfield Les Eplatures and Samedan airport air traffic control is delegated to the airport operator. Buochs ​​airfield is now partially foregoing air traffic control through Skyguide for cost reasons, and Grenchen, Lugano-Agno, St.Gallen-Altenrhein and Sion airfields could also completely or partially do without in the future.

In Switzerland, according to the requirements of the International Civil Aviation Organization ICAO, air traffic is handled according to instrument flight rules (IFR) and visual flight rules (VFR) in German, English, French and Italian - depending on the airspace and language region. In the future, only English will be permitted as a radio language in controlled airspaces.

Military duties

Skyguide is responsible for the management of civil aviation in Switzerland. Airspace surveillance is the responsibility of the Swiss Air Force, which can also use its primary radar to detect flying objects without a transponder signal. A special feature of military aviation is that the aircraft of the Swiss Air Force are operated by military air traffic controllers from Skyguide, who work together with employees of the Air Force in the so-called Air Defense & Direction Center (ADDC) in Dübendorf. These employees have completed civilian training to become air traffic controllers, but have completed military aviation, tactical training in addition to civilian training and are known as Tactical Fighter Controllers (TFC). Normally they work as civilian employees together with the military personnel, if necessary - for example during the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos or on foreign exercises - they work in military operations at officer rank, namely as a specialist officer from the rank of lieutenant. The military division of Skyguide is also responsible for the management of works flights for Pilatus Aircraft and RUAG .

Skyguide manages the Swiss airspace dynamically together with the Swiss Air Force, i.e. if the Air Force does not need its airspace or only needs part of it, it is given to civil aviation, and Skyguide carries out so-called shortcuts in which civil aircraft make their travel route through the military one Abbreviate airspace. In return, the Air Force may restrict civilian airspace if necessary, be it in the rare case of a full-force exercise - such as STABANTE - or at regular conferences such as the WEF. Depending on requirements, the Skyguide employees in the military area also operate combat aircraft in the so-called cross-border areas in France or Italy, i.e. in military airspaces that go beyond national borders and can be used by the air forces of both countries alone or jointly.

The amalgamation of military and civil air traffic control took place in 2001 with the HELCO (Helvetia Control) project. The costs originally estimated at 15 million francs per year had to be corrected to 35 million francs per year just one year later. The merger did not lead to any gains in efficiency and Skyguide did not succeed in recruiting enough air traffic controllers who meet the requirements and have an affinity for the military environment. No feasibility study had been carried out and the federal authorities did not react to several interim assessments with mixed results (2003, 2006, 2014).

The Luftpolizei 24 (LP24) project aims to ensure by the end of 2020 that the Air Force, together with partner organizations such as Skyguide, can intervene around the clock within 15 minutes by launching two armed combat aircraft in Swiss airspace. The project goes back to the motion "Increased readiness for air police service outside normal working hours" by Council of States Hans Hess , which was submitted in 2009. Skyguide has not yet succeeded in recruiting and successfully training enough TFCs, which is why “compromises in training flight operations must be accepted”. The federal government has guaranteed the jobs required by the end of 2020, but there is a risk that austerity measures could lead to bottlenecks.

Radar stations

The radome on the Lägern near Boppelsen

Skyguide uses nine radar stations for civil air traffic control:

  • two own far-reaching secondary radar stations, which are also known as "en route" radar stations, with locations above the Zurich municipality of Boppelsen on the Jura range of hills Lägern , on the Dôle and in Ticino on the Scopí , the FLORAKO secondary radars ("TG" , Ticino / Gotthard) of the Air Force for air traffic control;
  • two separate combined primary and secondary radars, also known as "Approach" radar stations, at Geneva (in Cointrin) and Zurich (on Klotener Holberg) airports for approach and departure control;
  • four foreign radar stations to complete the national radar coverage in Switzerland and to transfer air traffic to neighboring air traffic control with locations in Cirfontaine and Nevers (both France), Gosheim (Germany) and Monte Lesima (Italy).

history

chronology

  • On January 1, 1931, the Swiss Confederation commissioned what was then Radio Schweiz AG (RSAG) with air traffic control in Switzerland. The RSAG was founded on February 23, 1922 as Marconi Radio AG for the development of wireless telegraphy, after the First World War had shown the importance of this type of telecommunications. The RSAG was co-founded by the British Marconi's Wireless Telegraph. On May 10, 1928, Marconi Radio AG was renamed Radio Schweiz AG to emphasize its Swiss national character.
  • Up until the end of the Second World War, the RSAG primarily served the telegraphic communication needs of the Swiss Confederation. It was not until December 21, 1948, after an agreement with the Swiss Confederation that the Swiss Confederation and the airports would bear the costs of air traffic control, began monitoring the airspace.
  • On January 1, 1988, the air traffic control activities of RSAG were restructured and were now based in the state-owned company Swisscontrol, based in Bern . In 1996 Swisscontrol was converted into a public limited company under private law and its headquarters relocated to Geneva, where it moved to a new building at Geneva-Cointrin Airport in 1998 .
  • At the beginning of 2001, the previously separate civil and military air traffic control was combined in one company under the new name Skyguide. As the first (and so far only) air traffic control in Europe, Skyguide has since managed the entire airspace of a country, even if the civil and military air traffic control within the company itself is still separate.
  • On 21 September 2005 Skyguide was in all areas of the company according to the ISO 9001: 2000 (Quality Management System) certified . Skyguide thus fulfilled the requirements for the Single European Sky (SES) certification, which was issued around a year later by the Federal Office for Civil Aviation (FOCA).
  • At the beginning of December 2010, six states, including Switzerland, signed a state treaty for the legal establishment of the cross-border airspace block in the heart of Europe, the Functional Airspace Block Europe Central (FABEC).

Legal

  • In 2015, Skyguide was sentenced by the Federal Supreme Court to pay an hourly vacation to a former employee after Skyguide had not lawfully settled vacation wages for years: "The respondent was therefore unable to see from the payroll how much a surcharge was added to the performance wage as vacation pay . With this, the complainant has not fulfilled her duty, with which she can in principle be obliged to pay the corresponding vacation wages. " The matter affected several hundred employees. The legal background was the prohibition of compensation for vacation in Swiss labor law in accordance with Art. 329d Paragraph 2 OR.
  • On December 12, 2018, a Skyguide air traffic control officer was sentenced to a conditional fine for negligent disruption of public traffic ( Art. 237, Paragraph 2, StGB ). On March 15, 2011, in the control tower at Zurich Airport, the convicted air traffic control officer gave two SWISS aircraft in quick succession on the intersecting runways 16 and 28 for take-off clearance. As a result, there was a dangerous rapprochement (see also SUST report of March 6, 2012) and criminal proceedings were initiated against the air traffic control officer, but the Bülach district court was acquitted in the first instance . The public prosecutor's office filed an appeal, so that the higher court of the Canton of Zurich dealt with the matter as the second instance. At the end of November 2018, the higher court of the Canton of Zurich adjourned the matter, but then sentenced the air traffic control officer on December 12, 2018. It was the first publicly known case in Switzerland, where criminal proceedings were brought against an air traffic control officer because of an incident to which no one was willing Damage came, was done. In November 2019, he was acquitted by the federal court.
  • On May 30, 2018, an air traffic control officer from ACC Zurich was convicted by Skyguide of negligent disruption of public transport by the federal criminal court. The background was a serious incident on April 12, 2013 with a dangerous approach between aircraft operated by Ryanair and TAP Portugal while they were cruising (see also the SUST report of September 24, 2014). The federal court will have to deal with the matter. A Ryanair pilot has already been legally convicted with a penalty order because he had waived an objection to the penalty order.
  • At the beginning of September 2018, another air traffic control officer who works at Zurich Airport was on trial for negligent disruption of public transport. The proceedings at the Bülach District Court are still ongoing and go back to a near collision on August 22, 2012 between a commercial aircraft of the then Darwin Airline and a small aircraft that practiced approaches with a student pilot and a flight instructor (see also SUST report of September 24, 2014).

Accidents and incidents

literature

  • Sandro Fehr: The development of the third dimension. Origin and development of the civil aviation infrastructure in Switzerland, 1919–1990 . Chronos Verlag, Zurich 2014, ISBN 978-3-0340-1228-7 .

swell

Web links

Commons : Skyguide  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Commercial Register of the Canton of Geneva, Internet excerpt for SKYGUIDE, Société Anonyme Suisse pour les Services de la Navigation Aérienne civils et militaires.
  2. ^ Establishment of the radio station Marconi AG, since January 2001 «Skyguide».
  3. ↑ a b c d e Skyguide, Annual Report 2017 .
  4. ↑ Skyguide, media release of January 12, 2017, skyguide CEO (sic!) Daniel Weder is stepping down in the middle of the year - the current COO Alex Bristol will be his successor
  5. ↑ Skyguide, video message from January 12, 2017, CEO handover January 2017 .
  6. ↑ Skyguide and Syndicom, collective employment contract of February 12, 2016 .
  7. ^ Nouveau conflit social en vue à l'aéroport de Genève , in: Tribune de Genève, 11 May 2016.
  8. ↑ Dispute over the new CLA - Skyguide and pilots switch on Mediator , at: Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF), March 31, 2017.
  9. ↑ Maria Pineiro, Grève des contrôleurs aériens prévue le 23 juillet , at: 20 minutes, 10 July 2018.
  10. ↑ Les contrôleurs aériens de Genève, Sion et Berne ont déposé un préavis de grève , at: RTS Info, July 10, 2018.
  11. ↑ Skycontrol, Table summarizing the week's strike action , on: Facebook, July 10, 2018
  12. ↑ Some of the Skyguide air traffic controllers are calling for a strike , at: Luzerner Zeitung, 10 July 2018.
  13. ↑ Dialogue between Skyguide and Skycontrol resumed , Skyguide, media release of July 17, 2018.
  14. ↑ FABEC website .
  15. ↑ Swiss Federal Audit Office (SFAO), Fusion du contrôle aérien civil et militaire, mise en œuvre et bilan , March 8, 2017.
  16. ↑ Hans Hess: Increased readiness for the air police service outside of normal working hours . parliament.ch. December 7, 2009. Accessed October 31, 2019.
  17. ↑ Federal Department of Defense, Civil Protection and Sport (DDPS), DDPS project report - project assessment as of December 31 , 2016 , p. 26.
  18. ↑ Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (BFU), final report on Skyguide's radar systems of June 26, 2002, p. 4 ff.
  19. ↑ Scopi, A Radar airdef Scopi (English), at: zone-interdite.net.
  20. ↑ BGer 4A_72 / 2015 of May 11, 2015 ( Memento of February 23, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  21. ↑ Sibilla Bondolfi, hourly wage work: Skyguide has to pay extra holidays , in: K-Tipp, June 17, 2015.
  22. ↑ Air traffic control Skyguide violated labor law in hundreds of cases , in: Steiger Legal, February 17, 2016.
  23. ↑ Thomas Wachter, Paying out holidays: cash instead of leisure , in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), January 4, 2016.
  24. ^ Myriam Jäger, Vacation Wages - Wages instead of Vacation? , at: lexwiki.ch, March 7, 2016.
  25. ↑ Near-crash: Zurich Higher Court corrects district court and convicts air traffic controllers , in: Watson, December 12, 2018.
  26. ↑ Swiss Accident Investigation Office (SUST), final report No. 2136 on the serious incident - Airprox between the aircraft Airbus A320-214, HB-IJH, operated by Swiss International Airlines under radio call sign SWR 1326 and the aircraft Airbus A320-214, HB-IJW, operated by Swiss International Airlines under radio call sign SWR 202W on March 15, 2011 at Zurich Airport .
  27. ↑ Judgment in the Skyguide trial - court acquits air traffic controllers , in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), 7 December 2016.
  28. ^ Judgment: acquittal for air traffic control officers after near-collision at Zurich Airport , in: Steiger Legal, July 16, 2018.
  29. ^ Pia Wertheimer, pilot case comes before the higher court , in: Tages-Anzeiger, December 15, 2016.
  30. ↑ Pia Wertheimer, Too Complex: Judgment in the air traffic controller trial postponed , in: Tages-Anzeiger, November 27, 2018.
  31. ↑ Trial against air traffic controllers - Federal Court acquits Skyguide employees. In: srf.ch . November 8, 2019, accessed November 8, 2019 .
  32. ↑ Federal Criminal Court , judgment SK.2018.1 of May 30, 2018 .
  33. ↑ SUST, final report No. 2211 of the Swiss Accident Investigation Board SUST on the serious incident (Airprox) between the Boeing B737-800, EI-ENK, operated by Ryanair under flight number RYR 3595, and the Airbus A319-111, CS-TTD, operated by Air Portugal under flight number TAP 706, from April 12, 2013 20 NM southeast of Zurich Airport .
  34. ↑ Air traffic controller in court in Bülach: “The situation was always under control” . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), September 5, 2018.
  35. ↑ SUST, final report No. 2203 of the Swiss Accident Investigation Board SUST on the serious incident (near collision) between the Saab 2000 aircraft, HB-IZG operated by Darwin Airline SA under flight number DWT 124 and the Sportcruiser aircraft, HB-WYC from August 22, 2012 Zurich Airport .
  36. ↑ Swiss Military Justice, F / A-18 crash in the Susten region - interim results , media release from September 6, 2016.

Coordinates: 46 ° 13 '28.6 "  N , 6 ° 5' 57.6"  E ; CH1903:  496669  /  120125