2.3 Why this update and what are the key changes?

The Master Plan requires regular updates to reflect evolving needs, emerging policy priorities or new constraints affecting the aviation ecosystem and ATM in particular.

This edition of the Master Plan aims to provide the SES, the SESAR project and its stakeholders with an effective tool to address the urgent challenges facing the sector. The plan is also a means of raising awareness among policymakers and the broader aviation community about the urgency of developing and deploying solutions to make ATM better performing, more sustainable, more interoperable and harmonised across Europe.

By endorsing this Master Plan, stakeholders, Member States and SES bodies, represented in the SESAR 3 JU Governing Board, signal their commitment to collectively working to achieve the Digital European Sky.

This edition of the Master Plan has been streamlined in order to make it a strategic steering tool, focusing on ‘why act now’ (link to policy and performance ambitions), ‘what needs to be done’ (vision with a clear sense of priorities) and ‘by when’ (high-level roll-out to achieve the vision). The intention is to better serve the needs of decision-makers at public and private executive levels. In parallel, a revised reporting and monitoring framework, already adopted by the SESAR 3 JU Governing Board, enables greater transparency and improved monitoring.

In terms of content, the main changes include:

• The Master Plan reimagines Europe’s aviation infrastructure to support the decarbonisation of air transport while keeping safety as the paramount feature. Its aim is to make Europe the most efficient and environmentally friendly sky to fly in the world, reflecting the commitment of the aviation sector to becoming carbon-neutral by 2050 and thereby contributing to the EU’s policy ambition in this regard. It is estimated that improvements to ATM operations could reduce CO₂ emissions by up to 6 %. For the first time, the transformation of ATM is placed in the context of the planned introduction of sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) and the expected entry into service of zero-emission aircraft.
• The Master Plan forms the strategic basis for supporting investment decisions and facilitating the early planning of industrialisation activities. The plan outlines 10 strategic deployment objectives (SDOs) that need to be implemented between 2025 and 2035. These SDOs build on the 137 SESAR solutions (1) that are already available for deployment. By aligning the SDOs with investment planning by air navigation service providers (ANSPs) in the SES performance and charging scheme, the Master Plan aims to accelerate market uptake by a critical mass of early movers.
• The Master Plan also defines 12 research priorities for phase D, ‘Digital European Sky’ – an exercise not done in previous editions. These priorities address new development challenges and expectations for SESAR, which were not foreseen earlier, such as the vision of making Europe the most efficient and environmentally friendly sky to fly in the world; the integration of IAM, higher airspace operations and next-generation aircraft for zero-/low-emission aviation by 2035; as well as a new security and defence context for ATM in Europe. In 2025, the SESAR 3 JU will launch calls for exploratory and industrial research to implement these priorities and to make considerable progress on phase D research by 2030.
• The Master Plan puts a greater focus on security and cybersecurity matters in light of the evolving security and defence context in Europe (2),including the unavailability of airspace due to the Russian war against Ukraine, a significant increase in cyberattacks and global navigation satellite system (GNSS) jamming and spoofing. The Master Plan underlines the importance of enhanced civil–military cooperation in increasing the resilience and flexibility of European airspace.
• The Master Plan provides strong support for the transition to a modern, data-driven and cloud-based service-oriented architecture (SOA) delivery model. This new approach will enable the quicker deployment of new features and improvements while ensuring the interoperability of operations, airspace and technology across ANSPs, airports and airspace users. Moreover, the transition to the new service delivery model will facilitate the development of a technical regulatory framework for future ATM in Europe. Rather than overhauling and certifying the entire system, this future-proof framework will enable the development or updating of specific services to meet new standards. In doing so, the framework will be better aligned with best practices applied in other safety- and security-critical sectors. This approach has already been supported by major European ATM stakeholders in a joint statement calling for a new service delivery model (3).
• The Master Plan addresses the changing aviation landscape with the arrival of new vehicles (e.g. drones, air taxis, new military combat systems, new low- and zero-emission aircraft, higher air space operations, space traffic transiting airspace) in order to unlock the value at stake of innovative mobility services in Europe. This edition of the Master Plan defines how ATM can become more agile to accommodate this changing environment.

The Master Plan envisages an evolved role for humans in ATM through dynamic human–machine teaming and greater levels of automation. It aligns SESAR’s automation strategy and EASA’s artificial intelligence 2.0 roadmap (4) to strengthen this ambition.