As with many things, ATM stakeholders need to try before investing in new technologies, which is why SESAR members and partners carry out flight trials and other demonstrations in real-life environments involving a wide range of operational experts, from airports, air traffic control centres, airlines, business aviation and general aviation.

The fact that so many ATM actors are eager to participate is proving invaluable for accelerating the operational acceptance and the subsequent industrialisation of SESAR Solutions. In other words: “seeing is believing.”

Within SESAR 2020 a series of very large demonstration projects aim to demonstrate SESAR Solutions in close-to-operational environments.

These will aim to confirm the benefits and increase awareness of promising solutions among a broader group of airspace users and other aviation end-users and ultimately:

• Generate further confidence to support buy-in from main stakeholders including regulators for future deployments.
• Significantly reduce the business risks for both operational stakeholders and industry.
• Provide further inputs to related standardisation activities.
• Raise awareness regarding SESAR activities related to ATM performance issues and their results.
• Accompany SESAR pioneers all the way to pre-deployment.
• To assess full-scale deployment readiness.

Recognising that aviation is a global industry and global interoperability together with harmonisation are key for its safe and sustained growth, a series of large-scale demonstration also aim to address trajectory-based operations and improved flight trajectories using system-wide information management in a global environment.