Alex started his career in ATM as a Heathrow Approach controller in 1992 with NATS. He moved into the management of ATC in 2003 as the General Manager (ATS) at Farnborough Airport, and then over the next 6 years he worked as General Manager of the 3 of the 4 UK Air Traffic Control Centres at Manchester, West Drayton and Swanwick.  In 2009 he transferred to the NATS corporate headquarters as Director of Strategy and Investment and then also Director of International Relations, working with ENAV in a number of international fora, most particularly in the A6 group within SESAR.  In July 2011, he moved countries and ANSPs to take up the role of Chief Operating Officer with skyguide in Switzerland.

Which are the main challenges the ANSPs, and more specifically skyguide not being part of the EU, will face with the full implementation of SES2 package? 

Switzerland is, indeed, not a part of the EU, but cannot escape the geographical reality of being right in the middle of Europe with respect to the European air traffic network.  The Swiss state has therefore decided (very sensibly, in my opinion) that Switzerland will (quasi-voluntarily) abide by the rules that will apply in the rest of Europe, including the Single European Sky legislation.  Skyguide therefore basically faces the same challenges as all other ANSPs in the EU with respect to safety, capacity, cost and sustainability targets.  Switzerland is also part of the Functional Airspace Block Europe Central (FABEC), whose other 5 states are all part of the EU (which is much like the Blue Med FAB in having a mixture of EU and non-EU states in it).
Skyguide's biggest challenge at this time is actually less operational, but political: that it is not part of the Euro.The Swiss Franc is too strong (as far as we are concerned!) compared to the Euro, so skyguide's prices are suddenly very high, even though the costs have reduced slightly, because the prices are charged in Euros (and we pay our staff in Swiss Francs). Skyguide will therefore have to find ways to reduce its costs twice as much as had been forecast in order to remain in a reasonable position in terms of price.  Like most other ANSPs, skyguide will have a lot of work to do to get a good result in terms of capacity and fuel efficiency as well, but these are much smaller challenges than the Euro/Swiss Franc one.

How do you see the evolution of the role of the European ANSPs in Europe in the context of FABs?

I believe that we are in a critical phase in the context of FABs; we have seen some good movement towards better cooperation between ANSPs as a result of the FABs initiative, but this can only be a first step.  The first problem I see is that, in my opinion, we are not moving fast enough and we are not delivering enough benefits to our customers.  And the second problem is that we are at risk of remaining fragmented as ANSPs: the aim of the SES is, as its name suggests, a "Single European Sky", and we must ensure that we do not simply replace 30 ANSPs with 9 bigger ones which have no meaningful operational interfaces between them.  So although FABs are a great start, we need also to be thinking about life beyond FABs, and that is why I am very keen to foster much better operational and high-level relationships between ENAV and skyguide (and therefore also between Blue Med and FABEC). 

Skyguide together with DSNA and ENAV is part of the Coflight project. How do you see this cooperation going forward?

Skyguide is committed to the steps agreed between all parties in Coflight (which is the next generation flight data processor (FDP) and associated tools).  Skyguide will then have to, according to the original plans, decide whether and when to"opt in" to version 2 (the first version to be put into operation) once this system has successfully passed its "Site Acceptance Test".  Skyguide's preferred strategy in technological terms, though, is to work towards a day when it (as a smaller ANSP) no longer has to have its own FDP system and can work on developing ATCO tools and HMI which are appropriate to the task we expect ATCOs to be doing in the future.  This will probably take ten years, and so, in order to do this, we will have to work very closely indeed - much more closely than today - with our neighboring ANSPs such as DSNA in France, DFS in Germany and ENAV. 

The first reference period of the Performance Scheme will be starting in few months, what impact will it have on skyguide?

The first reference period will be an opportunity to skyguide to test its ability to deliver to the targets set and to play its part in the FABEC network and in the European network.  It will also show us where the biggest improvements can be made - and then we will need to work with our neighbouring ANSPs, our suppliers and partners to deliver those improvements. It is going to be a challenging time, but I believe that skyguide, like ENAV, is well prepared for it.