Airspace World 2026

The rapid evolution of air traffic management technologies is reshaping the regulatory landscape, creating both challenges and opportunities to strengthen resilience and competitiveness. 

This panel will explore how regulatory frameworks can adapt to emerging technologies while maintaining safety, interoperability, security, and operational robustness. 

Discussion will focus on enabling innovation through clear, implementable specifications and efficient compliance processes that support both adaptability and industrial scalability.

Bringing together key regulatory, standardisation, and operational stakeholders, the panel aims to identify practical approaches for coherent regulation and aligned technical standards that enhance resilience and reinforce the sector’s global competitiveness.

Panellists

As Europe advances toward a fully digital and trajectory-based air traffic management environment, with CP1 ATM Functionality 6 – Initial Trajectory Information Sharing as enabler, robust and modernized CNS (Communication, Navigation & Surveillance) capabilities are essential.  

Speakers will discuss the deployment status of AF6 and latest CNS innovations and the roadmap as proposed in CNS Evolution Plan, the role of digitalisation and interoperability, the evolution of air-ground communications, and how these elements converge to make Trajectory-Based Operations (TBO) a reality.  

Designed for aviation and ATM stakeholders, this session provides strategic perspectives combined with technology insights, and a forward-looking view of Europe’s path to modernised, scalable, and sustainable airspace operations.  

This panel brings together key actors - SESAR Deployment Manager, Operational Stakeholders, SESAR Joint Undertaking, EUROCONTROL, EUROCAE and EASA - to explore the operational, technical, and regulatory enablers that are shaping a digital European sky. 

Panellists

The EUROCONTROL Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre (MUAC) is responsible for the provision of upper airspace air traffic control services over Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and north-west Germany; one of the busiest and most complex airspace areas in Europe. MUAC operates within a unique multinational civil–military environment, requiring continuous coordination across national boundaries. 

This session will explore how MUAC integrates civil and military requirements into its day-to-day operations through close coordination, flexible use of airspace, and network-centric decision-making. Drawing on operational experience, the session will illustrate how dynamic traffic demand, military activity, and airspace constraints are managed to ensure delivery of safe, reliable, and efficient services; all while balancing the operational needs of both civil and military airspace users.

Panellists

The major transformations currently affecting ATM stakeholders are far-reaching, and sometimes full of paradoxes. They go well beyond the technical modernization of systems, involving a global transformation of operating modes and professional practices. In a safety-critical, high-reliability operational environment, the challenge is to do more and faster—in terms of capacity, performance - without ever compromising safety, under increased requirements for justification of decision-making, and production of evidence. 

This growing tension between performance and safety represents a genuine challenge, above all a human one. 

As European carries large ambition to transform the industry, as the new master plan brings strategic deployment objectives to be implemented by 2035, what can be done to translate those ambitions into concretes actions in the field, what can leverage from existing experience, which kind of methodologies can be applied?

Speakers

The growth of drone operations is increasing pressure on Europe’s airspace and accelerating the need for scalable, harmonised integration solutions. U-space provides the EU framework and eco-system to enable safe and efficient drone operations alongside manned aviation, but its transition from regulation to operational deployment raises challenges related to interoperability, ATM integration, resilience and governance. 

This panel will assess the state of U-space implementation across Europe and will discuss priorities for its evolution, including the need for research to support the industry, the role of GNSS-based services, certification and oversight, and cooperation between civil, governmental and public-interest users of the airspace. Moderated jointly by EDA and EUSPA, with participation from European institutions including SJU, EASA, EUROCONTROL and industry representatives.

Panellists

Severe weather and capacity constraints have long been major disruptors for Europe’s air traffic network, but new solutions are changing the game. Yolanda Portillo, Head of the EUROCONTROL Network Manager Operations Centre will share insights on how the EUROCONTROL Network Manager - together with aviation partners - has introduced innovative capacity and weather-based procedures that significantly improved operational stability and performance in Summer 2025. Pre-agreed rerouting scenarios applied under the scope of a well-established Cooperative Decision-Making (CDM) process have become a key enabler for safe, efficient, and predictable operations across the network. By limiting last-minute changes and reducing volatility, this stable operational framework allows both airspace users and service providers to plan with greater confidence and to optimise the use of available capacity, resulting in cutting en-route delays by 37% compared to the previous summer. The presentation will also include an update on the evolution of the procedures for summer 2026.

Speaker