Airways New Zealand (Airways Corporation of New Zealand Limited) is the sole Air Traffic Service provider in New Zealand.
The company was created 1987 as a State-Owned Enterprise having formerly being a division of the Ministry of Transport, a government department. This followed the recommendations of the 1986 Mason-Morris Review.[1] Airways New Zealand is a commercial Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP), responsible for managing all domestic and international air traffic operating within New Zealand's 30 million square kilometres of airspace over New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa and the Cook Islands.[2] This involves:[3]
Airways was the world's first ATC provider to operate a fully automated conflict probe with their Oceanic Control System (OCS). It assists controllers' decisions, by predicting possible collisions. This formed the basis of the Lockheed Martin Ocean21 ATC system used by the United States' oceanic centres at Anchorage, Oakland and New York. These systems allow controllers to manage significantly more aircraft than traditional systems because the machine is responsible for detecting any potential future conflicts so the controller can then decide on an action that maintains a safe separation between aircraft.