Heritage Cases

The South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) has the responsibility to promote, regulate and enforce civil aviation safety and security in the country. SACAA also receives its mandate from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to improve air traffic navigation in South Africa. In line with the mandate for ATNS and to provide air traffic management solutions and associated services on behalf of the state in accordance with ICAO Standards, ATNS has since embarked on initiatives to install DMEs within the TMAs within the various airports to increase safety, efficiency and cost-effective operations of airplanes within the South African airspace. The DME technology also has the following benefits: • DME-DME network is extremely accurate. Airplanes will be able to identify their position better than VHF VOR i.e. Very High Frequency Omni-directional Range which means that Frequencies are transmitted in various direction. Although this system does allow for the positioning of aircraft, it does however lack the accuracy of the DME system.; • Allows for more efficient use of airspace; • It provides Area Navigation (RNAV) capability which is the future of navigation; • Allows the use of multiple routes on the common system of airways to resolve traffic; • Facilitate reduced separation thus increasing the aircraft handling capacity; and • Serve as a redundancy to Global Navigation Satellite System. The proposed FAPE 5: Patensie DME site is one of the projects that will fulfil part of the ATNS mission which is ‘to provide safe, expeditious and efficient air traffic management solutions and associated services’