Alex Hendriks

Acting Director CEATS, Deputy Director ATM Strategies, Eurocontrol

Alex Hendriks was born in Amsterdam in 1951.

After High-school (HBS), he was recruited in 1971 by the Netherlands Civil Aviation Authority’s ATS Directorate (LVB), as a trainee air traffic controller. After his training he was posted as radar-controller at Amsterdam ACC.

In 1981 he moved to the ATS Operations Bureau as a senior-expert and was in 1986 appointed as Head of that same Bureau. Throughout his career with the Netherlands ATS Directorate until 1991, he maintained his radar-controller’s license by working regular shifts at Amsterdam ACC.

From 1981 until 1986 he was elected for three terms of office as Executive Vice President Technical of the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers Associations (IFATCA). In that capacity he participated in many global and regional ICAO meetings, the most important of which was ICAO’s FANS Committee.

In 1991 he was recruited by EUROCONTROL in Brussels, where between 1993 and July 2006 he was the Head of Airspace / Flow Management & Navigation.
As such, he was responsible for:

• the ECAC Airspace Strategy;
• European airspace design and implementation;
• European ATS route network design and implementation;
• Airspace Management concepts;
• Development of new ATM procedures;
• The ECAC Navigation Strategy;
• Navigation infrastructure planning;
• Eurocontrol’s RNAV and RNP-RNAV initiatives, and
• Airborne navigational requirement.

As of 1 July 2006 he was appointed as Deputy Director ATM Strategies, with specific responsibilities for setting the airspace and navigation strategies. At the same time, he was also appointed as Acting Director and Programme Manager for the Central European CEATS project.

Since 2002 he is also Director of the U.S. Air Traffic Control Association (ATCA), responsible for the Europe, Middle East & Africa Area.

Alex is also an active airline pilot and currently flies a couple of days per months on Boeing B737-700/800 aircraft to major cities in Europe and the Middle East for one of Europe’s main airlines.

Alex and Gisele live just north of Brussels. Alex has a son and a daughter, currently both students at the KLM Flight Academy. Their main hobby is sailing their sea-going sail-yacht on trips around the North Sea area.

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