Ukraine's air navigation service has become the first to introduce a new assignment system aimed at overcoming a worsening shortage of aircraft transponder squawk codes.
The navigation service, UkSATSE, has put in place the Centralised Code Assignment Management System (CCAMS) which operates from a server hosted by pan-European air navigation organisation Eurocontrol.
Thirteen other countries are set to put CCAMS in place this year.
Squawk codes have previously been "statically" allocated to individual countries and assigned to aircraft by the air navigation service under a specific procedure.
But the limitations of the squawk coding means this mechanism is leading to a shortage of codes at peak times.
