Contingency Planning for Air Navigation Services Training Course

The Contingency Planning for Air Navigation Services Training Course equips air navigation service provider managers, operations and technical staff, safety and contingency specialists, and civil aviation authority oversight professionals with the knowledge and practical tools needed to plan, prepare for, and manage disruptions to air navigation services so that safety is maintained and services are recovered as quickly as possible. Air navigation services depend on people, systems, facilities, and infrastructure that can be affected by equipment failures, power and communications outages, cyber incidents, staff shortages, fires, natural disasters, pandemics, industrial action, and loss of facilities. Because uninterrupted air navigation is essential to aviation safety and to national connectivity and economy, states and providers are required to have robust contingency plans that maintain a safe, if reduced, level of service and enable rapid recovery. The course covers contingency planning from framework to exercising and recovery. Participants learn the importance and regulatory basis of contingency planning for air navigation services, the relationship between contingency planning, safety, business continuity, and resilience, and the types of threats and scenarios that can disrupt services. The program then addresses the contingency planning process, including risk and business impact assessment, identifying critical services and dependencies, and defining contingency objectives and acceptable reduced service levels. Participants cover contingency measures and strategies, including fallback and degraded modes, backup and alternate facilities and systems, redundancy, airspace and capacity reduction measures, rerouting and coordination with adjacent units, and arrangements with neighboring providers, as well as contingency for specific scenarios such as system and communication failures, facility loss, staffing shortages, cyber incidents, and pandemics. Participants also examine contingency organization, roles, and command and control, communication and notification including coordination with airspace users and stakeholders, activation, escalation, and recovery and return to normal operations, testing and exercising of contingency plans, and the review, maintenance, and continuous improvement of contingency arrangements. The course is delivered through case studies, risk and impact assessment exercises, contingency strategy workshops, and a contingency scenario exercise. Participants leave with a contingency planning framework reference, a risk and business impact assessment template, a contingency plan template, an activation and recovery checklist, and a contingency exercise and improvement template.