The Twenty-seventh meeting of the North Atlantic Safety Oversight Group (NAT SOG/27) was held on the premises of NAV CANADA Head Office in Ottawa, Canada from 6 to 9 December 2022. Welcoming remarks were delivered by Mr. Félix Meunier, the Director General of Civil Aviation at Transport Canada, and by Ms. Vanessa Robertson, the Director ATS Standards NAV CANADA. Mr. Thomas Kirkhope from the United Kingdom chaired the meeting. Representatives from Canada, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom and United States participated in the meeting, as well as the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and the International Federation of Air Line Pilots' Associations (IFALPA).
(see full size image)
The meeting allowed for a review of the level of risk as a consequence of operational errors and in-flight contingencies in the North Atlantic high-level airspace (NAT HLA), based on the reports from the North Atlantic Central Monitoring Agency (NAT CMA), the NAT Scrutiny Group (NAT SG) and the NAT Mathematician Working Group (NAT MWG). The NAT SOG also discussed a variety of topics which led to Decisions and/or draft Conclusions for the North Atlantic Systems Planning Group (NAT SPG) to consider, in particular in relation with:
- the Oceanic Clearance Removal (OCR) Safety Case;
- Commercial space operations in the NAT;
- Supersonic and hypersonic operations in the NAT; and
- the conduct of a NAT exercise for Autonomous Distress Tracking (ADT) with Location of an Aircraft in Distress Repository.
The next NAT SOG meeting (NAT SOG/28) is planned to be held from 6 to 9 June 2023 at the ICAO EUR/NAT Regional Office (Paris).
