A new executive director has picked up the reins of one of Europe’s most ambitious R&D programmes, which has been working since 2007 to develop the technologies needed to underpin the modernisation of the air traffic control system, reducing emissions, whilst boosting capacity, increasing safety and cutting journey times.
Florian Guillermet stepped into the post of executive director as SESAR (Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research) takes the first tentative steps towards the coordinated implementation of technologies it has developed.
In total, it will require investments of €30 billion to completely update Europe’s inefficient and fragmented air traffic control system, according to the European Commission. For now, SESAR has a renewed mandate and €2 billion, including €600 million from the Horizon 2020 R&D programme, to embark on this task.
“We are going to see a real increase in air-traffic in Europe – probably about 50 per cent – in 15-20 years, driven by the growth of the global economy. We need to adapt to this; to make things more efficient and environmentally-friendly,” Guillermet told Science|Business.
There are a number of significant shortcomings in the current system. For example, while modern airplanes use the global positioning system this information is only available to pilots – it does not tell air traffic control where a particular plane is.
Currently the position of each plane registers as an approximate blip on controllers’ screens, meaning aircraft must be spaced well apart. And instead of flying straight and direct, planes must follow a zigzag pattern, going from one ground radio beacon to the next, and ascend and descend in steps, at each stage needing permission from the ground.
Down on the ground there is a very complex system, with small air traffic management teams routing Europe’s 32,000 daily flights through a vast matrix of sky highways.
All this wastes fuel and causes congestion and delays. The average flight in European airspace is nearly 50 kilometres longer than it need be.
SESAR, a public-private partnership co-funded by the EU, Eurocontrol and industry partners including Airbus, national air navigation service providers and airports, and the equipment manufacturers, Thales, Indra, Alenia Aermacchi, Frequentis, Selex SI, Honeywell and others, is charged with developing the technologies to modernise the system and with coordinating their implementation.
SESAR was established in support of the Single European Sky Policy, which has the ambition of tripling capacity, while halving air traffic management costs.
At the political level, the overall aim of the Single European Sky is to reduce or eliminate differences in procedures between national air traffic control systems. These difference are said to be responsible for about €5 billion in avoidable costs each year, resulting in millions of tonnes in wasted fuel and extra carbon emissions.
Better technology
Air-traffic control systems are a patchwork quilt of conventional radar and satellite coverage that can have gaps in coverage.
“Today, pilots use voice communications; we need to break from this and progressively increase automation features for data communications,” said Guillermet. “Many air communication systems do not necessarily operate well with each other – to overcome this, we are developing an enhanced information exchange framework.”
Early tests of this System Wide Information Management (SWIM) framework have shown it can deliver early and more frequent information to pilots and controllers.
It’s not just about air-to-ground communications though, says Guillermet.
“We are also looking at the feasibility of remotely operated towers, to service one or groups of small airports,” he said. “SESAR’s remote tower concept enables the provision of air traffic services at locations where it is too expensive to maintain conventional tower facilities and services, or at airports where such services are currently unavailable.”
In bigger airports like Heathrow and Charles De Gaulle, where there are serious capacity issues at peak periods, research done by SESAR will help get people into the air sooner.
“By increasing efficiency and predictability, we will minimise runway taxiing times, for instance. Right now, taxiing sequences are quite complex. Sometimes, it can take many minutes to take off after you’ve taken your seat in the plane – this could be done better,” Guillermet said.
Optimising routes
Guillermet considers SESAR’s greatest success to date to be two trial flights to test initial 4D (i4D) trajectory management, a system SESAR has developed for connecting aircraft and ground systems to optimise aircraft routes in three dimensions, plus time. On 19 March this year, a flight trial from Toulouse to Copenhagen and then onto Stockholm, successfully validated the sharing of trajectory information both in ground and airborne operations, and the capability of the aircraft to comply with time constraints in the en-route and approach phases of the flight.
The flight trial further confirmed that i4D offers important safety and environmental gains, as well as increased flight predictability and overall network efficiency, SESAR said.Impact on airlines
Guillermet acknowledges that Europe’s hard-pressed airlines may find it difficult to invest in upgrades at present, but notes that SESAR has ensured airlines are well represented, and has some 100 experts on board whose job is assess any foreseeable impacts of technology.
“We will try everything we can to limit the investment they have to make. We do need upgrades but we’ll try and connect these to the clear opportunities for airlines: we can offer higher punctuality and greater predictability of flights,” Guillermet said.
SESAR’s piece in the global jigsaw
SESAR is being developed in line with a series of similar projects, such as NextGen in the US and other initiatives in China and Japan that, under the leadership of the International Civil Aviation Organisation, will eventually evolve into a global air traffic management system.
In recognition of the results that SESAR has achieved to date, on 15 April the European Parliament voted to extend SESAR’s mandate by eight years, until 2024.
For more on SESAR, have a look here.
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