# Silent Coordination The most underappreciated concept in airport operations. When information flows freely between all stakeholders in real time, parties adjust their plans based on shared data without needing to call, email, or walk to each other's office. EUROCONTROL calls this "silent coordination." ## How It Works Ground handler sees the updated ELDT (Estimated Landing Time) is 15 minutes late. Without anyone telling them, they shift their crew assignment to cover another turnaround in the gap. Airline ops sees the TSAT (Target Start-up Approval Time) has been pushed back 10 minutes. They adjust the boarding call without waiting for a phone call from ATC. ATC sees that three aircraft have updated their TOBT simultaneously and adjusts the departure sequence before anyone requests it. No phone calls. No emails. No coordination meetings. Each actor sees the shared picture and takes the right action independently. ## Why It Matters This is the jump from Stage 2 (data sharing) to Stage 3 (situational awareness) in the airport maturity model. The data was already there in Stage 2. What changed is that everyone can see everyone else's data, and the system presents it in a way that makes the right action obvious. The coordination cost drops dramatically. ## The Fragility Silent coordination only works when the data is trusted, timely, and complete. One stakeholder feeding stale data breaks the model for everyone. This is why A-CDM implementation success correlates more with stakeholder engagement than with software quality. The [[Airport Collaborative Decision Making]] framework is designed precisely to create the conditions for silent coordination to emerge. The concept generalizes beyond airports. Any multi-agent system where shared situational awareness replaces explicit communication. See [[Self Organising Networks]] in telecoms for the same pattern. Related: [[Airport Operations MOC]], [[Airport Collaborative Decision Making]], [[Total Airport Management]], [[Airport Operations Centre]] --- Tags: #deeptech #firstprinciple #systems