iCAS (iTEC Centre Automation System) is a state-of-the-art harmonised and interoperable air traffic control system which will be rolled out at all DFS and LVNL control centres. It is a significant functional evolution to the current DFS ATS (Air Traffic Services) systems P1/ATCAS (Air Traffic Control Automation System) and P1/VAFORIT (Variance Flight Data Processing System Automation Requirements Implementation) and the LVNL ATS system AAA (Amsterdam Advance ATC). iCAS features a 4D-trajectory and is designed to provide ATC (Air Traffic Control) services within the entire airspace of Germany and the Netherlands, including all lower and upper control centre sectors, except in airspace controlled by EUROCONTROL MUAC (Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre).

iCAS will be used as a fully integrated civil / military ATS system, thus enabling a more "Advanced and Flexible Use of the Airspace" (A-FUA) for both civil and military purposes. In addition, iCAS will be used to control and safely guide more than three million flights carrying over 450 million passengers flying through European core airspace per year. Therewith, the benefits of the implementation of this project being significant with regards to the European public, as well to the European economic growth generated and facilitated via air transport.

iCAS procurement and deployment is currently planned in an iterative two-step approach called iCAS I and iCAS II and a latter third Phase called iCAS III:

.iCAS-I: Deployment of iCAS at Karlsruhe Control Centre. The deployment of the first phase iCAS I is undertaken by two DFS/LVNL projects:

--2016_026_AF3 System Procurement for Deployment of PCP Air Traffic Control System iCAS at DFS and LVNL

--2015_190_AF3 Deployment of Air Traffic Control System iCAS Implementation of ATM PCP Functionalities at LVNL an DFS (funded under 2015-EU-TM-0196-M)

.iCAS-II adds all necessary functions to the iCAS-I system to also support ATC services in lower En-Route and Terminal Airspace (TMA) and to enable the transition between FRA (Free Route Airspace) and low En-Route and TMA (Terminal Control Area) operations. iCAS will achieve a full integration of upper En-Route and lower En-Route Air Traffic Control Centres including their associated TMAs and Extended Arrival Management systems, thereby enabling a significant increase of overall network performance also by including approach and departure to major airports in core Europe.

.iCAS-II will be fully integrated with Extended Arrival Management systems (AMAN) to enable the provision of arrival sequence time information and to manage AMAN constraints for highly congested airports. This support to the management of arrival constraints is achieved through data exchange, data processing and information display at the relevant controller working positions in the ATS control centres. First iCAS-II deployment is planned for Munich Control Centre by end of 2020 / beginning of 2021 and iCAS-II will then be rolled out subsequently to all remaining iCAS centres in Amsterdam by the end of 2021, in Bremen by end of 2021 / beginning of 2022 and Langen by end of 2022 / beginning of 2023. Activities to be executed after 2020 are not part within this Implementation Project (i.e. Action)

.iCAS-III (future version) will add additional functionalities of the PCP e.g. to make use of flight information exchange services like sharing of Flight Object information (AF5) and 4D trajectories(AF6) and Conflict Resolution Assistant (CORA). Thus, iCAS-I and iCAS-II are central prerequisites and critical enablers to deploy additional performance improvements of the PCP IR. iCAS-III activities are not part of this Action.

The key iCAS components Flight Data Processor, Controller Working Position and Middleware will be deployed into all ACCs of the iTEC ANSPs DFS, ENAIRE, LVNL and NATS making a total of 11 control centres with their associated airspace deploying und utilising a European, harmonised and interoperable ATS system.