Ireland to Join Forces with Sweden, Norway and Denmark to provide Air Traffic Control Training to the Global Market
14 January 2014: The Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) has entered into an important strategic training alliance with Entry Point North (EPN), a well-established transnational Air Traffic Management training academy.
As part of this initiative, the IAA has secured a 25% share of the training academy to partner with Scandinavian Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) Avinor (Norway), LFV (Sweden) and Naviair (Denmark).
As of the 1st January 2014, the IAA’s in-house training centre became a 100% EPN owned training subsidiary.
The new entity is staffed by seconded IAA training personnel and will continue to deliver all IAA air traffic controller training from its present location in Ballycasey, Co. Clare.
Eamonn Brennan, Chief Executive, IAA said: ‘This is a unique and ground breaking business relationship that is aligned with Single European Sky objectives. Becoming part of the Entry Point North family provides the IAA with significant financial and cooperative benefits. It will lower IAA capital investments through centralised and shared investments and development costs. The IAA will similarly provide EPN with a greater economy of scale. The Irish subsidiary will also provide EPN with an in-depth knowledge of the COOPANS training and simulator system (COOPANS is the air traffic control technical system used by the IAA, as well as the ATC providers in Sweden, Denmark, Croatia and Austria).
There is increasing pressure from the European Union Single European Sky initiative to restructure European Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) in order to deliver a more cost effective Air Traffic Management (ATM) service, putting an enormous cost burden on the training departments of individual states.
EPN was founded in 2005 as a joint partnership between the three ANSPs in Scandinavia. Its aim is to become the market leader in global ATM training and is already one of the largest Independent ATM academies in Europe with multinational staff from fifteen countries. Each year over 500 students and professionals sign up for various ATM related training programmes at its state of the art facilities.
For more information, contact:
Tony Lane
Tel: +353 1 603 1199
Mob: +353 86 7911864