The European Air Transport Command (EATC) has the responsibility and the operational authority to plan, task, control and evaluate Air Transport (AT) and Air to Air Refuelling (AAR) operations. Exchange and availability of information, transparency between customers and the EATC are therefore of utmost importance.
To guarantee this, EATC Partner Nations developed a special software for the EATC and its “customers”: The IT-tool MEAT (Management of European Air Transport). MEAT is dedicated to support the AT and AAR activities in the domain of planning, tasking, mission controlling and mission analysis & reporting.
Since beginning of December the new version 1.6 is in use.
MEAT 1.6
The software supports movement transport coordination centers, flying and technical units, handling agencies, air base operation centers, national headquarters and other units.
Even domains like passengers and cargo regulations, flight- and crew duty regulations, the discussion of creating hub’s or the introduction of the A400M are supported by the data retrieved out of the system. Currently the application is used by 3.500 users all over the world, growing up to 10.000 users in the next years.
Relying on recommendations of the EATCs change advisory board further improvements and priorities will be described for the time after the current version 1.6.
MEAT 2.0
MEAT 2.0 will be established in March next year, expected to be more responsive and stable.
The creation of modules for qualification, reporting, messaging, additional interfaces with national systems and the implementing of new users and nations are furthermore on the scope. Of course this will take some time, because - just as an example - the introduction of a qualification module costs around 3000 - 4000 hours of development without calculating extra time for testing and deployment on the production site.
Nevertheless: The development of MEAT is still ongoing.
Text: Kurt Weinthal
Pictures: EATC