Global air transport is expected to grow by around 5% annually until 2030. Air traffic management is therefore critical to ensure the safety and efficiency of flights in Europe. It involves complex procedures and technologies requiring high levels of coordination, harmonisation and interoperability of air and ground systems and operations due to safety and security challenges. CEF Transport is supporting projects to modernise European air traffic management, making it safer, more cost-efficient, and more environmentally friendly.
Air Traffic Management
In Europe, air traffic management faces several difficulties: increasing air traffic control capacity, reducing the environmental footprint, integrating new technologies like drones in the European airspace, and ensuring cybersecurity now that systems are becoming increasingly digitalised.
CEF Transport is modernising air traffic management through SESAR, which brings together the resources and expertise of civil and military stakeholders to develop innovative technologies and ways of working to improve air traffic management performance.
SESAR is the technological pillar of the Single European Sky initiative which tackles the fragmentation of European airspace and aims at improving air traffic management performance from the safety, capacity, cost-efficiency and environmental perspectives. New technologies and harmonising systems play a major role in achieving these goals.
To ensure that European airspace is coordinated and synchronised, the EU developed Common Project One (CP1): a European regulation that sets out essential requirements for the implementation of air traffic management to improve the performance of the European aviation system. It identifies key digital technologies and procedures for deployment to ensure interoperability and consistency among EU Member States and create a single European sky. To date, the EU has invested €1.7 billion in 9 Common Project One actions, including 356 implementation projects and 66 air traffic management projects.
The SESAR Deployment Manager coordinates all Common Project One projects, making sure that airports, airlines, air navigation service providers, meteorological service providers, industry and military stakeholders work together as one team to deliver the expected results.
Additionally, the CEF Transport programme is supporting regional airports to be included in the Eurocontrol network.
These airports play an essential role in the economy and society, but cannot always afford to operate a control tower around the clock.
SESAR’s remote tower services offer the means to provide air traffic management in a cost-efficient way at remote airports.
By installing sensors around the airfield, the operator can monitor activity such as runway occupancy, weather, and visibility in real time.
Data is relayed back to a remote control centre where a qualified operator is on hand to provide aerodrome flight information services or air traffic control services for arrivals and departures.
Digital Sky Demonstrators
CEF Transport also supports the creation of large-scale digital sky demonstrators with €117.5 million in EU funding. The demonstrators prepare technological solutions for implementation, in live and cross-border environments. The results of these demonstrations will help improve environmental impact, capacity, safety, security, and efficiency.
Digital sky demonstrators play a key role in achieving climate neutral aviation and making Europe the most efficient and environmentally friendly airspace in the world. They help speed up the implementation of operational measures and technological innovations that improve fuel efficiency of flights, reduce CO2 emissions, lower aircraft noise, and improve air quality and around airports.
Additionally, digital sky demonstrators contribute to creating a more flexible, scalable, resilient, safe, and secure air traffic management system that can handle disruptions and helps air navigation services to become more automated and digitalised. This transformation will require changes in how these services are provided, ensuring the system remains as safe as it is today while meeting the increased capacity needs of airspace users.
Discover digital sky demonstrators projects
ECHOES addresses coverage gaps over remote and oceanic regions where real-time voice and data links are currently unavailable to improve flight efficiency, safety, and sustainability.
EU contribution: €15 million
BURDI is implementing a U-space airspace concept to manage dense and complex UAS operations in controlled, uncontrolled and UAM environments.
EU contribution: €4.7 million
HERON will reduce flight delays, fuel burn and CO2 emissions via enabling continuous descent operation, reducing undue vectoring and optimising trajectories.
EU contribution: €18 million
EALU-AER aims to prove feasibility, reliability and operational efficiency of transport services provided by various eVTOL aircraft for a variety of use cases and applications.
EU contribution: €2.8 million
U-ELCOME develops, tests and demonstrates U-space services for managing urban drone traffic across 15 locations distributed in Spain, Italy and France.
EU contribution: €7 million
ESMA focuses on demonstrating a dual link and a multilink service to ensure the seamless link between Satcom (Iris) and VDLm2 technologies.
EU contribution: €12 million
DEVICE showcases the delegation of airspace using a virtual centre setup between air traffic service units operating in the same flight information region.
EU contribution: €23 million
EXODUS is making the first move towards a virtual air traffic management environment, shifting from location-based systems to service-oriented, location-independent setups.
EU contribution: €34 million
PEACOCK is connecting the Network Manager with 20 additional airports across Europe, including regional hubs and will implement a semi-automatic process to improve flight departure times.
EU contribution: €1.5 million