The radar service guaranteed by the military personnel of the Air Force of the Decimomannu base, headquarters of the Experimental Department Standardization in Aerial Shooting (RSSTA), ensures daily approach control of civil and military air traffic in the central-southern Sardinia area.
With the press releases of 23 December 2015 and 5 January 2016, the Airport Management Company airport of Cagliari Elmas (SOGAER) has disclosed the data on the trend of passenger traffic for the year 2015 which closed with a growth of 2,29% compared to 2014, for a total of 3.712.558 passengers who concerned the Cagliari Elmas airport.
During the Christmas and end-of-year festivities, 976 flights have been planned for a total of 140.000 passengers.
The satisfactory results in terms of passenger growth also confirm the importance of the work carried out by the highly qualified personnel of the Air Force which, with its radar service, operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to guarantee the correct flow of military and civil air traffic.
At the RSSTA in Decimomannu, the service is organized on the basis of 12-hour shifts that see the flight controllers alternating with the radar consoles the base is equipped with. After contacting the Decimomannu approach (Cagliari APP), civil aircraft arriving and departing from Elmas are instructed on the procedures and vectoring to the Elmas airport or the airways for subsequent Italian and foreign destinations. At the same time, information on the weather conditions of the Elmas airport is released to the crews. The radar approach control it is also activated for tourism flights to Sardinian, recreational and sports airfields and for those engaged in launching paratroopers and aerial photogrammetric shooting.
The activity carried out daily by the Air Force auditors is the result of years of experience. The military are initially trained at the Air Space Control Training Department of Pratica di Mare (Rome), where they have state-of-the-art equipment and simulators that allow you to experience real situations in all scenarios of Italian and foreign airports. Only after an intense training activity, the personnel will be assigned to the Air Force Departments where they will operate as a tower and approach controller and whose professionalism will also guarantee the control of civil aviation aircraft movements at national level.
