Dec. 17, 2019
European ATM Master Plan 2020
Description
The 2020 Edition of the European ATM Master Plan was published in December 2019. It supersedes all other versions of the Master Plan.
Within the framework of the EU aviation strategy and Single European Sky (SES), the European Air Traffic Management (ATM) Master Plan (hereafter referred to as ‘the Master Plan’) is the main planning tool for ATM modernisation across Europe. It defines the development and deployment priorities needed to deliver the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) vision. The Master Plan is regularly updated, through strong collaboration between all ATM stakeholders, in order to respond to the evolving aviation landscape.
New elements in this edition
This latest edition incorporates several supporting and complementary studies and analyses:
A proposal on the future architecture of the European airspace was developed by the SESAR Joint Undertaking (SJU) (18), with the support of the Network Manager, and delivered to the European Commission in February 2019. Known as the Airspace Architecture Study, the proposal seeks to address the airspace capacity challenge in the short to long term by combining airspace configuration and design with technologies to decouple service provision from local infrastructure and progressively increase the levels of collaboration and automation support. The intention is to ensure that airspace is optimised according to operational needs, regardless of flight information regions (FIRs) or national boundaries. The content, approach and key milestones of the study are fully synchronised with, and make use of, the technology that is being developed within the SESAR programme, combined with operational improvements. This is made clear throughout this edition of the Master Plan, in which interrelations between the supporting technological roadmaps are duly identified and assessed to highlight the critical path, in terms of dependencies and timelines, to achieving the defragmentation of European skies through virtualisation and the free flow of data among trusted users across the network. The sovereignty, responsibility and liability issues are important aspects that are addressed by the European Commission in a specific study.
The roadmap for the safe integration of drones into all classes of airspace was adopted by the SESAR Administrative Board in March 2018 (19). It outlines which drone-related research and development (18) https://www.sesarju.eu/node/3253 (19) SJU, European ATM Master Plan — roadmap for the safe integration of drones into all classes of airspace (https:// www.sesarju.eu/node/2993) INTRODUCTION 13 (R&D) activities should be prioritised in order to support the expansion of the drone market and achieve the smooth, safe and fair integration of these new aircraft systems into the European airspace. This includes U-space, a framework designed to fast-track the development and implementation of a drone management system, in particular for but not limited to very low-level (VLL) airspace, as well as provisions to integrate large remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) into manned traffic. The key elements of this roadmap have been incorporated into this edition of the Master Plan.
A more integrated air-ground roadmap to enable improvements in aviation infrastructure and in particular a move towards performance-oriented communications, navigation and surveillance (CNS) infrastructure was developed. It details the capabilities that make up the future CNS infrastructure and services, as well as steps to integrate and rationalise CNS systems and technologies in order to increase their performance, in terms of costs, coverage and spectrum use. The roadmap provides a timeline, aligned with the four phases of the Master Plan, for the rollout of the future CNS infrastructure.
The definition of phase D of Master Plan, for the delivery by 2040 of a fully scalable system able to handle both manned and unmanned aviation in line with the joint industry declaration ‘Towards the digital European sky’. This includes the high-level identification of related future R&D and investment needs. Linked to this, an ATM automation model that mirrors the five-level model from the Society of Automotive Engineers (ranging from Level 0, ‘no automation’, to Level 5, ‘full automation’) was developed. The model illustrates the level of automation anticipated for each phase of the Master Plan.
An updated assessment of the macroeconomic impact of SESAR, considering the broader impact of changes or costs related to the modernisation of aviation infrastructure. This includes an assessment of passenger benefits and other impacts on society driven by SESAR (e.g. environmental impacts).