What is the added value for Brussels Airport Company of being a member of SESAR?

Brussels Airport Company has been involved in SESAR deployment activities since 2014, with the implementation of, amongst others, the Airport Operations Center (APOC) and the initial Airport Operations Plan (iAOP) (including information sharing with the Network Manager (NM)).  The concepts behind these implementations stem from previous SESAR research & innovation cycles.

Considering that airports are obvious multimodal nodes and form an essential part of the ATM network, it is essential that we collaborate with the other stakeholders on the implementation of the ‘Strategic Research & Innovation Agenda (SRIA)’ of the ‘Digital European Sky (DES)’. This would not be possible without the support of the European Union, the SESAR Joint Undertaking and the SESAR Deployment Manager.

Becoming a founding member of the ‘SESAR 3 Joint Undertaking (S3JU)’ was a logical step to embark on the SESAR innovation process. Brussels Airport Company wants to become more involved in research & innovation activities making air transport smarter, more sustainable, connected and accessible.  Through our membership in SESAR, we participate and have access to leading-edge solutions and technologies enabling aviation to become more scalable, resilient, economically sustainable, environmentally efficient and predictable.

What are Brussels Airport Company’s top three innovation priorities?

In 2022, Brussels Airport Company drew up a new strategic plan called ‘Shift 2027’.  To safeguard our future as an aviation company, our climate impact needs to be significantly reduced.  Therefore, sustainability is one of the three main priorities in our strategy.  Brussels Airport Company wants to become Net Zero Carbon by 2050 at the latest.  Together with our partners, new developments such as sustainable aviation fuel and artificial intelligence, as well as making our buildings more energy efficient, will help us to build a more sustainable and even more efficiently organised airport.  In addition to our  participation in the pan-European project STARGATE, our membership in SESAR will allow us to accelerate our transition to a greener airport and aviation.

Of course, the core of our activities remains the same with what we started out with more than 60 years ago: connecting passengers and goods across Europe and beyond.  That is why continue working on connectivity between aircrafts and between different modes of transportation.  In order to enhance the customer experience for both passengers and cargo customers, we will continuously invest in the optimisation of our operations and put a clear focus on efficiency and reliability.

Last, but not least, Brussels Airport is more than an airport.  Therefore, it is crucial to keep on diversifying our activities in order to better withstand the difficulties we are facing.  We are focusing on innovation and are creating new alliances with partners that share our vision, based on strengths we have developed over the years.  We have already taken first steps by investing in drone technology via SkeyDrone and big data and artificial intelligence via Jetpack.

Digital sky: Why is air traffic management and its digital transformation important to Brussels Airport Company?

As written in the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) for the ‘Digital European Sky (DES)’, ATM and aviation will evolve into an integrated digital ecosystem characterised by distributed data services.  By implementing the Airport Operations Center (APOC) and the Initial Airport Operations Plan (iAOP), Brussels Airport Company has embarked on the digital journey of gathering and sharing data and information to build and contribute to a common picture of the ongoing and predicted traffic situation at airport and network level.  However, it is only the beginning, with a lot of opportunities ahead to further improve efficiency and safety, while guaranteeing and increasing capacity.

In which flagships of the Digital European Sky programme is Brussels Airport Company particularly interested in getting involved, and why?

Brussels Airport Company is involved, or interested in getting involved, in the following flagships;

1. Connected and automated ATM

In the context of the flagship ‘connected and automated ATM’, Brussels Airport Company implemented or is implementing concepts like ‘Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM)’, the ‘Airport Operations Centre (APOC)’ and the ‘initial Airport Operations Plan (iAOP)’ (including information sharing with the ‘Network Manager (NM)’), with or without support from the SESAR Deployment Manager.  With the implementation of the Extended Airport Operations Plan (eAOP) and its further integration with the Network Operations Plan (NOP) already in the pipeline, and through participation in the SESAR 3 Joint Undertaking’s Digital European Sky (DES) programme, Brussels Airport Company is interested in further research & innovation to improve airport operations and to enable more collaborative decision-making between stakeholders to improve the predictability of airport-network performance.

2. Capacity-on-Demand and dynamic airspace

Brussels Airport Company sees the flagship on ‘capacity-on-demand and dynamic airspace’ as a prolongation of the flagship ‘connected and automated ATM’ and will therefore also mobilise resources for research & innovation in this domain, especially for future data services and applications for airports and its integration with the network.

3. Multimodality and passenger experience

As part of the strategic pillar ‘hub performance’ of its strategy, Brussels Airport Company shortlisted ‘better connections & intermodality’, in addition to‘punctuality, efficiency & reliability’ and ‘focus on customer experience’ as key focus areas.  Considering that airports are obvious multimodal nodes for aviation, the access to / exit from the airport and the passenger experience at the airport are of prime important for research & innovation activities in our domain and perfectly fit in the flagship ‘multimodality and passenger experience’

4. Aviation green deal

Another strategic pillar of Brussels Airport Company’s strategy is sustainability. We ‘care for people & planet’ so we want to achieve ‘net zero CO2 emissions by 2050 at the latest’ and become ‘pioneers in our industry’.  This matches exactly the ambitions of the flagship on ‘aviation green deal’.  Hence our involvement or interest in getting involved in research & innovation that reduces the impact on the climate.