The SESAR project and its role in modernising aviation’s infrastructure was at the heart of discussions that took place at the Financial Times Business of Aerospace & Aviation Summit: Bringing digital disruption to the industry on 25 April 2017 in London.
The forum brought together thought leaders, industry experts and C-Level executives to explore the future outlook for digitalisation across the civil aviation landscape and how to create the ultimate passenger journey.
The forum focused on the potential for exponential growth enabled by emerging technologies. There was also a snapshot of the leading cross sector innovations to help determine what’s next for the aviation industry and what this could mean for the whole travel value chain.
Panel discussions looked at practical approaches to translating innovative capabilities and opportunities within and outside of the industry. They also looked at how the industry and regulators can keep pace with rapidly changing technologies, and meeting the need to change business processes.
SESAR was represented by a number of voices. Skyguide’s CTO, Klaus Meier spoke of the work undertaken on virtual technologies and how this was changing the way ATM business was being done.
Digital technologies are also supporting better collaborative decision making, said Stuart Birrell, CIO Heathrow Airport, referring to the opening of an initial version of the SESAR airport operations centre. He noted that better decision making means greater airport efficiency and flight predictability, and is translating in to savings of millions in fuel and CO2 for the airlines flying into Heathrow.
Key to accelerating the pace and uptake of digital technologies is separating out the systems that are safety critical from those that are not, said Simon Daykin, Chief Architect & Head of Service Design, NATS. He pointed to the need also for aviation stakeholders to share data more effectively and easily, in areas such as flight planning, to speed up innovation. The need to go towards big data and greater data sharing between airports, airlines and other stakeholders was echoed by Eric Nantier, representing Lufthansa Aviation Group, which would play a big part in reducing delays and improving the overall passenger experience.
Ultimately, the advance in digital technologies and the arrival on the scene in the future of an assortment of new air vehicles, such as drones, demands a rethink on how we manage our skies, said Alain Siebert, SESAR Joint Undertaking. This new landscape of aviation and its implications for the underlying air traffic management (ATM) system will be addressed in the next update of the European ATM Master Plan, Europe’s roadmap for ATM modernisation, work on which is already underway, he noted.
