IVAO Belgium

Based on the understanding that common definitions, procedures and regulations for the handling of military air traffic in the various States are a prerequisite for a fully integrated civil-military air traffic environment, in a first step, definitions for GAT and OAT were identified.

General Air Traffic (GAT) is defined as:

"all flights which are conducted in accordance with the rules and procedures of ICAO and/or the national civil aviation regulations and legislation".

Operational Air Traffic (OAT) is defined as:

"all flights which do not comply with the provisions stated for GAT and for which rules and procedures have been specified by appropriate national authorities".

Harmonisation of OAT/GAT covers three main actions. 

• Identify the various types of military operations witch can be accomodated by applying the same,or nearly the same, rules and procedures as applied for civil aviation (GAT) and those who cannot require seperate rules and procedures (OAT)
• Defining common rules and procedures for handeling military operations within the airspace.
• Common principles for the safe handeling of civil and military traffic in a mixed environment within several airspaces.

Various types of Air Traffic: 

• Civil flights (GAT), which come under the category of general air traffic (GAT: IFR or VFR), including certain military traffic.
• Military flights, which come under the category of military operations traffic and, and acceptance flight tests.
• Military air traffic (OAT) includes both military operations traffic and acceptance flight test flights.

These three types of air traffic, very different in nature, must all use the airspace together in safety. In the upper airspace, the general air traffic is organized around pre-determined routes (PDR) or airways.

Civil flights only ever deviate from these routes after co-ordination with military centres.

OAT (Military Air Traffic) flights, on the other hand, have unforeseeable flight paths (combat) or ones that are difficult to modify. Because of this, airspaces must be temporarily reserved for them where they can fly without interfering with civil air traffic.

Finally, there is one more category of military flights: "out of area" military air traffic. These are flights that can use all the airspace. The military controller in charge of this flight is responsible for maintaining separation with other aircraft, according to information provided by civil aviation systems.

OAT may never interfere with GAT.
ATC needs to seperate OAT and GAT at any time!