We have faced a series of challenges in the industry – technical, operational, and economic – but the constant throughout has been the widespread recognition that aviation is growing, more capacity is needed and this can only be solved with innovative solutions. By the early 2000s, we’d already deployed 8.33, Mode-S radar, B-RNAV and RVSM, delivering substantial improvements in operational efficiency and significantly increasing capacity in the en-route sectors. Since then, work has continued on the next technical enablers and procedural changes that solve operational blockers, with contributions from EUROCONTROL and SESAR playing an important role over this time.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is interesting to reflect on the progress made, the barriers we faced, and look at where new focus might be needed going forward. It is especially important as technology has become more accessible and enables things to be done today that were not even thought about back then. During the early 2000s, we were busy defining ATC safety nets, collaborative decision making (CDM), automatic dependent surveillancebroadcast (ADS-B) and its applications, advancedsurface movement guidance and control systems (A-SMGCS), performance based navigation (PBN – including EGNOS), datalink (VHF and SATCOM), aeronautical data exchange formats, system-wide information management (SWIM) and its services – all accompanied by numerous large scale flight trials. We ended up with numerous solutions that found their way into international industry standards and were recognised in regulatory frameworks, including ICAO, with the introduction of the aviation system block upgrades (ASBUs). We discussed and prepared the relevant safety cases for each solution and there were numerous conversations as we examined yet another cost-benefit analysis and discussed whether enough value was being realised by technologies already deployed on aircraft by airlines.
The need to realise benefits from previous investments has not changed and core to efforts today is a need to look ahead and focus limited resources where they can be deployed to the greatest effect. This is the role fulfilled by the SESAR ATM Masterplan and the ICAO Global Air Navigation Plan (GANP), anticipating what will be needed and developing the next building blocks that can be deployed (regionally or locally) to support continued growth. The big change in the landscape is digitalisation. Everyone is talking about it or working on it. But what do we mean by it? We have been discussing the creation of digital solutions to exchange flight information or inform flight planning for many years. For example, the discussions on SWIM services and Flight Object which, it could be argued, have not been as extensively deployed as originally envisaged. Digitalised implementations here have tended to be local and piecemeal rather than widespread.
We certainly seem to have had more success in deploying localised solutions compared to ones requiring cross-border coordination (in the European sense), as the arguments on the solution to be deployed can be made locally with reference to locally delivered benefits so budgets can be allocated and decisions can be made. If we think here about the difference between en-route, terminal manoeuvring area (TMA) and airport and where decisions lie, it becomes clearer that there is more of a challenge in the en-route – especially when we want to share information across multiple boundaries. At the heart of this is the ATM system and its ability to “talk” to another system that sits across the national boundary. Currently, ATM systems are developed in isolation, they are often “monolithic” systems built to national specifications, talking different languages and so struggle to understand each other.
Even the use of common languages such as OLDI can result in varying implementations so that not all messages are available across borders. Interoperability will enable improved data accuracy and content, realtime updates, and information exchange at a level that will allow the full implementation of trajectorybased operations. A move to interoperable systems has however proved to be a greater challenge than originally anticipated, with key deployments in the area being either repeatedly delayed or scaled down over the last 15 years. Most systems in Europe still rely on technology that has been deployed since the 1980s. With the need for more efficient use of airspace accentuating again after COVID and a significant number of ATM systems reaching their end of life, ATM suppliers and air navigation services providers (ANSPs) have been working together to enable a step change with next-generation ATM systems planned to meet common project one (CP1) requirements and include key deployments such as SWIM. Major ANSPs and the key system suppliers active in Europe have renewed their commitment to a “modern, datadriven, and cloud-based service-oriented architecture (SOA) delivery mode” based on “open architecture and interfaces, decoupling of service and infrastructure layers and a cloud native architecture of components”. Given such a statement, the next five to ten years will be crucial with most new implementations planned in the 2028-2030 timeframe. However, it is also an example of the slow pace we have in aviation of adopting new technologies, given that SOA was first used in other industries 30 years ago!