To mark the completion of SESAR 1 activities, some 50 airport and industry stakeholders recently came together to learn, share experiences and see first-hand the possibilities offered by SESAR’s airport operations centre (APOC).

Organised by Eurocontrol at its experimental centre in Brétigny, the open day featured presentation of some eight SESAR 1 operational projects addressing APOC operations, which entailed a wide range of validation exercises in many locations. The day also heard about some the principal elements in APOC’s toolset, such as its performance-based monitoring and management feature. Using a performance dashboard, project partners in Paris Charles de Gaulle, Alicante, London Heathrow, Madrid-Barajas and Toulouse were able to analyse different airport processes - both airside and landside - so that problems and their root causes would be identified and remedial actions instigated.

As well as hearing of progress made in SESAR 1, the open day was an opportunity for stakeholders to find out plans in SESAR 2020 to focus on APOC-enabled total airport management (TAM).

“Now is a good time to showcase what we have achieved over the last years in Airport Operations Management and look at what we are going to do going forward - with a special focus on the Total Airport Management work we’ll be doing in SESAR2020,” explained Alan Marsden from Eurocontrol. Paris Airports’ Olivier Delain presented the key elements of work to be done in the Total Airport Management project - PJ04 - in SESAR2020.