2025 Agenda

Doc 4444 was designed to provide globally harmonized procedures, and in many respects it does that very well. However, wake turbulence is treated in a relatively contained and time-based way, reflecting the operational environment and knowledge available when those provisions were developed.

Today’s airspace looks very different. We have denser traffic, mixed aircraft performance, enhanced surveillance, and a much better understanding of wake vortex behaviour. As a result, many States now manage wake turbulence as a dynamic operational hazard, rather than purely as a separation minimum.

The question, then, is not whether Doc 4444 is wrong, but whether its wake turbulence provisions still reflect how wake turbulence is actually managed in modern airspace, and whether they should evolve to better support contemporary operations.