As part of the series, this vodcast, ‘Deploying in a time of COVID’, turned its attention to how the pandemic has changed what we are doing in ATM and more importantly, what we need to deploy in the new normal. Tanja Grobotek, CANSO, Director Europe Affairs and Nicolas Warinsko, General Manager, SESAR Deployment Manager joined Florian Guillermet the Executive Director of the SESAR JU to discuss the issues of most concern. 

Do Europe’s ATM modernisation plans still make sense?

The last 12 months have shown just how quickly priorities can shift in ATM, from capacity, sustainability and now to scalability. The pandemic has not fundamentally changed the modernisation plans that are underway, but rather increased the sense of urgency to speed up their implementation. There is also a growing understanding that what’s good for capacity is not necessarily bad for sustainability. Equally, making the system sustainable and scalable can also make it financially sustainable. There are solutions in the pipeline that can deliver multiple benefits, and these are the ones that need priority investment.

What needs to change and how do we get there?

The pandemic offers an opportunity to reflect on better, more cost-efficient ways of investing in delivering a system that is smart, scalable and sustainable. Proposals include:

• Addressing network-wide implementation, focusing on transversal services and their delivery;
• Rationalising the infrastructure, such as communications navigation an service, which currently costs 1 billion euros annually (compared to a satellite constellation which has a one-off cost of 400 million euros);
• Investigating in new, more sustainable ways of financing the system - Today, no matter whether there is 1 or 100 aircraft in the sky, the cost does not change.
• Collaborating with every stakeholder in the value chain - radical change cannot be done alone.

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