FINEST

Estonian Air Navigation Services (EANS) and Air Navigation Services Finland (ANS Finland), the main air navigation service providers in Estonia and Finland, have a long record of cooperation in the field of Air Traffic Management.  The implementation of Free Route Airspace in Northern Europe brought a possibility and need to continue the cross-border cooperation. In 2018, based on common interest, a decision was taken to commence wider cross-border cooperation and FINEST programme was initiated. Within the FINEST cross-border airspace between Estonia and Finland will be merged consisting of the Flight Information Regions (FIRs) of Helsinki and Tallinn between FL95 and FL660.

The objective of FINEST is to achieve optimal performance in the areas relating to the service provision, cost-efficiency, capacity, flight efficiency, environmental sustainability, continuity and safety.

The airspace will be restructured and new airspace segments will be established for enhancing the air traffic flows.  The ATC sectors will be organised from certain airspace segments for supporting air traffic flows. The air traffic sectors in this airspace will be established on the basis of traffic flows, regardless of the national borders.  The provision of air traffic services in these sectors will be dynamically transferable between the ACCs (Area Control Centres) of Tallinn and Helsinki.

Fig. 1. Example of airspace design, its segments and traffic demand in the morning, afternoon and evening.

FINEST goals and Action plan are in compliance with the EU requirements and in the context of SES programme and SESAR DP regulatory framework.  The goals of the programme are in line with the document „Future Airspace Architecture Study” developed by SESAR JU and Network Manager.  The support of Network Manager and industry is important for the implementation of Deployment Plans.