In this project, ASECNA, the Agency for Aerial Navigation Safety in Africa and Madagascar, takes over the central procurement of the advanced aviation message handling system (AMHS) infrastructure for its member countries, including the delivery of eight complete and independent systems; Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Guinea-Bissau now benefit from the most advanced upgrade of their existing legacy aeronautical fixed telecom network (AFTN) messaging service. The innovative, fully integrated messaging technology is now increasing their communication capability and fully supporting the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) basic and extended AMHS service profiles.
Although AFTN has facilitated safe air travel for many years, ICAO has mandated the migration to AMHS to meets the demands of the growing domain, supported by the system’s enhanced functionality. Frequentis Comsoft supplies its entire AMHS product line, consisting of the market-leading AMHS system AIDA-NG, and CADAS-ATS, an ATS terminal for messaging services and flight planning, all of which facilitate the transition from AFTN to AMHS. The delivered systems provide new major functionalities allowing ASECNA to smoothly migrate to new technologies for reporting weather information and a future system wide information management (SWIM)-based environments.
“With eight African nations changing from AFTN to AMHS, the whole African airspace becomes more modern, reliable, and secure,” said Frequentis Comsoft managing director Constantin von Reden. “For the Frequentis Group, it is the first major infrastructure program in Africa, and we are proud to add ASECNA to our list of happy clients. Covid-19 travel restrictions brought challenges, however virtual capabilities and long-term partnerships helped us to deliver. This includes the support from our established cooperation with the French Air Navigation Service Provider, DSNA, who provided operational training sessions in two of the eight locations in Africa.”
The Frequentis integrated and mature AFTN/AMHS solution is operational in almost 90 countries worldwide.