site.btaBulgaria to Train Kosovo’s Air Traffic Controllers

All 28 air traffic controllers from the Pristina Approach Control Authority in the Republic of Kosovo are receiving training at Bulgaria’s the State Enterprise "Air Traffic Control" (BULATSA), the company said on Tuesday. The trainees will undergo a specially designed course to refresh their knowledge and skills to be able to ensure safe, orderly and expeditious flow of air traffic in their country.

The course fully covers the requirements of the European Regulation 2015/340 and the ANSA refresher training programme, and is conducted on the basis of a contract between the Air Navigation Services Agency - Republic of Kosovo and BULATSA. The training is necessary for Kosovo air traffic controllers to continue the validity of their licenses to perform their duties.

In addition to the theoretical part, they will also go through practical exercises, which will be conducted in the BULATSA simulator, where they will act out situations with high workload, operation in adverse weather phenomena, failure of surveillance equipment, as well as other risks and emergency situations.

The simulations are conducted on the airspace specially designed by the BULATSA specialists, which fully coincides with the real airspace of the Republic of Kosovo, including all the actual navigation points and aids, and procedures applied by the air traffic controllers. The aircraft encountered in the simulator match those operating at Pristina airport.

The BULATSA simulator provides the possibility to set up the Human Machine Interface (HMI) to fully resemble the one used in the Republic of Kosovo. The training is part of BULATSA's plan to develop its simulator and provide the ability to train and perform real-time simulations, both for its own needs and for external contractors. Similar courses were held for air traffic controllers from North Macedonia and Armenia under the guidance of experts from the BULATSA Aviation Training Centre.