Traditionally reserved for space rockets and military planes, higher airspace is now accommodating a wide range of new airspace entrants operating at flight levels well above the level of today’s conventional aircraft operations. These range from long-endurance balloons to slow-moving high-altitude platform systems or suborbital hypersonic vehicles – all of which present an extremely diverse set of operating characteristics.
The ECHO ConOps defines a harmonised approach to airspace operations in airspace above approximately 60,000 ft. It sets out clearly the future roles, procedures, and infrastructure required to meet growing demand, and covers the varying needs of low to high-speed vehicles as well as space missions, with preflight strategic deconfliction to ensure safe operations and trajectory separation.
