What is the added value of being a member of the SESAR 3 JU?

AirNav is delighted to participate as a partner in the SESAR 3 JU because our involvement ensures that we can contribute at a senior governance level to decisions that impact our business and on European aviation generally, and we also participate in projects of interest to us. There is significant value for us as an ANSP and as a COOPANS partner in that we become aware and can help to influence the direction and speed at which both business and technological problems are analysed, and proposals developed for their resolution. Examples include the recent submissions for the ISLAND, RELEASE and trajectory-based operations projects. AirNav expertise can be deployed in such exploratory research (ER) and industrial research (IR) projects and our experts can then bring back knowledge and learning on new innovations and technologies being considered or implemented by partners in the European aviation family. Access to EU funding is an important element also which helps us to fund our initiatives and pass this on to our end users in adjusted unit rates.

Why is air traffic management and its digital transformation important to AirNav?

As an ANSP, AirNav is part of a complex eco-system which includes ANSPs, airlines, airports, network manager, regulators, and end customers. We must therefore keep abreast of developments in the industry. With steady forecast growth in traffic demand in the next number of years and increasing automation and integration of systems and data between all stakeholders, the AirNav must be agile in its own management and development of ATM systems to keep up and play our part. Much of the technological innovations we see are being driven by other key agendas such as new business in the U space area, EU environmental targets and the need to increase capacity and resilience and reduce costs.

What are Airnav’s top three innovation priorities?

As part of the COOPANS alliance, the AirNav will very soon be embarking on an ambitious project to upgrade the COOPANS platform. This project will focus on the complete modernisation of all aspects of the system hardware and software supporting open architecture, ensuring compliance with regulations and delivering improved automation and interoperability. These innovations are required to assist COOPANS in supporting the aims of the Digital European Sky (DES) including developments within several of the DES flagship categories such as connected and automated ATM, air-ground integration and autonomy, and dynamic airspace and virtualisation and cyber-secure data sharing.

In which flagships of the Digital European Sky programme is AirNav particularly interested in getting involved, and why?

The AirNav recognises the need for continuous progress in the journey to improve aviation capacity and resilience and meet pressing environmental targets.  As a member of the COOPANS alliance, the AirNav is a partner in several proposals already submitted under SESAR 3 2022 call, which are linked to the DES flagships. These include the following projects:

• RELEASE -  HORIZON-SESAR-2022-DES-ER-01-WA2-5

To assess how legal, regulatory, economic and security challenges around implementing a service-oriented ATM architecture for COOPANS alliance members can be overcome.

• ISLAND -  HORIZON-SESAR-2022-DES-IR-01-WA3-3

The project encompasses the industrial research aimed to timely and efficiently create and use airspace capacity, in combination with targeted, effective demand and/or capacity measures. It will focus on advanced levels of dynamic airspace configuration, leveraging different virtualisation models, digital INAP applications as well as Network-wide monitoring, all with high levels of automation.

• ATC TBO - HORIZON-SESAR-2022-DES-IR-01-WA3-1

The project proposes to validate TBO SESAR Solutions for flights in the tactical execution phase for en-route and TMA operations, thus contributing to the finalisation of the SESAR Phase C developed in SESAR 2020 and the realisation of the Digital European Sky vision in SESAR Phase D.