SESAR projects were among the winners at this year’s Single European Sky awards ceremony, which took place on 7 March at the World ATM Congress in Madrid. Five winners were chosen from some 36 applications and were recognised for delivering excellence in air traffic management in the categories of performance, innovation and cooperation. The awards were presided over by Henrik Hololei, Director General of DG MOVE and Violeta Bulc, European Commissioner for Transport.

The Augmented Approaches to Land (AAL) demonstration project received the award in the “Innovation-Technology” category for successful trialing advanced satellite and ground-based approach procedures to increase the capacity of the European airport network and reduce the environmental impact. The project is the first initiative worldwide to analyse and describe the minimum airport requirements to enable low visibility landings using several advanced approach procedures at all types of airports and to demonstrate with full flight simulator and trial flights that such operations are safe, feasible and affordable.

Meanwhile, the RNP Implementation Synchronised in Europe (RISE) demonstration project was recognised in the “Performance-environment” category for showing benefits of performance-based navigation (PBN) in reducing the number of missed approaches and track miles thereby reducing fuel burn and CO2 emissions.  The results from the 500 flight trials conducted by RISE partner airlines and ANSPs in France, Greece, Cyprus and Portugal are paving the paving the way to wider implementation of RNP in Europe. RISE also brought together a number of airlines who share a common interest in developing PBN, helping to demonstrate the benefits of deploying these operational techniques in a collegiate fashion and helping to spread their uptake.

Partners in the Multiple Remote Tower Operations by Single ATCO demonstration project picked up the award in the “Performance-cost efficiency” category for validating the SESAR concept of remote tower technology through a series of operational trials (based on over 50 demonstrations). These highly successful trials built upon the experience of single remote tower operations and validated the capability for single air traffic controller operation of multiple remote towers. The project has confirmed that a multiple remote tower solution provides the potential for more cost effective deployment of human resources during periods of low aircraft movements, particularly when combined with other initiatives such as the centralisation of approach control service and for contingency purposes.

Several SESAR initiatives also received special mentions, including:

• Cooperation: ELSA project
• Environmental performance: Optimised Descent Profiles (ODP)
• Safety performance: PBN Rotorcraft Operations under Demonstration (PROuD) for its satellite-based helicopter flight procedures
• Technological innovation: SESAR’s virtual centre concept

Projects' members: