The Single European Sky’s ATM Research project “SESAR” is one of the most ambitious modernisation projects launched by the European Union, contributing to the implementation of the Single European Sky. The SESAR Deployment Manager (SDM) is in charge of coordinating and synchronising the innovation of Europe’s ATM infrastructure, ensuring the full involvement and responsibility of the ATM industry in the delivery of SESAR. The SDM function is operated by the SESAR Deployment and Infrastructure Partnership (SDIP), a consortium composed by Airlines, Air Navigation Service Providers, Airports and EUROCONTROL.
Mariagrazia La Piscopia, the recently appointed Executive Director of the SDM, has more than 20 years of experience in aviation and air traffic management at technical, operational and strategic levels, spanning from R&D to Deployment. Before moving to the SDM, she was the Head of International Coordination and ATM Planning at the Italian air navigation service provider, ENAV S.p.A. As Executive Director, she is responsible for the overall strategic vision and management of the activities performed by the SDM.
During the 2022 World ATM Congress, The Controller magazine took the opportunity to ask her a few questions.
During the World ATM Conference, you stated that 230 out of 341 SESAR projects are operational and benefit passengers. Do you know how many of them improve things for controllers?
The Implementation Projects under SDM coordination, aimed at fulfilling the SESAR Deployment Programme and the Common Project 1 should not be seen in isolation. Common Project One (CP1) identifies six ATM functionalities that are set to decisively improve the performance of the ATM operations in Europe. The combination of such functionalities is poised to deliver significant benefits to all ATM stakeholders, including Air Traffic Controllers and European passengers.
In one way or another, every single Project helps to ensure a more effective, more efficient, better connected, scalable and environmentally sustainable ATM process. By doing so, they bring benefits to everyone directly involved in ATM and even beyond: to European passengers, citizens, economy, and environment. You can check out our latest calculations here.
From those 230 projects, a large proportion is focused on the areas of digitalisation, data integration, cybersecurity, safety nets and automatization, definitely bringing benefits to the daily work of the Controllers. In all the projects, humans remain at the center but can count on technology upgrades to help managing air traffic management complexity.
For instance, European Air Navigation Service Providers are upgrading and enhancing their ATM systems. With this specific goal, DSNA, DFS and LVNL have worked in the last six years to deploy and put into operations, under SDM coordination, new tools, and system upgrades in their Area Control Centers, enabling a smoother and more fluid traffic control.
But specifically to your question: there are many examples that I could mention, such as AMAN, the arrival manager that supports the controller in defining the sequence of arrivals at busy airports, and its integration with DMAN, the Departure Manager; the functions linked to ASMGCS, Advanced Surface Movement Guidance and Control System, designed to increase safety in the airport environment; the National and cross-border Free Route Airspace and its connectivity with the TMAs, the Terminal Areas; the availability of displaying the EPP- Ehnanced Projected Profile-trajectory downloaded directly from on board system, to which a conformance check shall be associated in the event that the latter differs from the trajectory elaborated from the FDPS, thus again enhancing safety.
We take the chance to inform your community that the constant progress and commitment of the stakeholders has increased the figure of completed Projects from 230 to 232, with many more to be closed before the end of the year.
It is important to highlight that these benefits are being delivered thanks to the stakeholders involved in SESAR deployment. Amongst them, Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSP’s) are clearly one of the most important groups. SESAR Deployment Managers membership include 14 ANSPs controlling around 80% of flights in the European Union (around 8 million flights per year), as well as all major traffic flows operated in Europe.
All experts working at SESAR Deployment Manager also have a background in ATM and we have operational Air Traffic Controllers amongst our staff: that’s what allows us to have a really good view on and a direct connection with the operational reality and what is beneficial for an ATCO.
Will these generally reduce the controller’s workload or just add a new layer of complexity?
The combination of new functionalities coupled with the operational use of specific technologies will bring benefits to all stakeholders whilst keeping the workload for all parties involved within adequate thresholds, if not reducing it. Technology itself is in support to the ATCOs as it has to optimize their workload, avoiding further complexity: the target remains to deliver safe air traffic control, even when traffic grows.
Amongst many, a great example is the implementation of Departure Management in Copenhagen Airport. Improving the flow of departing aircraft is a critical tool to reduce congestion within the largest and busiest airports. Operations in Copenhagen have gotten significantly smoother, allowing for the most efficient use of the airport resources and infrastructure: departing aircraft are guided from the airport gates to one of the three runways, and their departures are automatically sequenced taking into account any potential constraints but also Airspace Users’ operational preferences.
In addition to the previous example, ENAIRE is, since 2019, able to swiftly apply Short Term ATFCM measures across all its Area Control Centers, enabling the management of traffic flows avoiding bottlenecks and network congestion. Applying short-term flight level caps, rerouting or even ground delays to a limited number of flights leads to the reduction of traffic peaks and ensures smoother operations for the overall network.
Modernisation and digitalisation through SESAR deployment will not make things more complex; on the contrary, projects are aiming at reducing complexity and making ATM more resilient. This definitely supports the ATCOs, which can count on new, improved and user-friendly systems.
In your opinion, which major project that will benefit ATC can be operationally implemented on short notice, say in the next 2- 3 years?
Several cases could be listed. Amongst them, the Borealis Free Route Airspace is worth mentioning, Borealis FRA is a wide-range modernisation programme aimed at deploying cross-border Free Route operations within the whole Northern European airspace, thanks to the adoption of new technologies and increased collaboration between several ANSPs.
Thanks to this programme, flights will follow their preferred route when flying across the skies of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom (almost 12.5 million square kilometres). Already today, airlines entering the European airspace its Easter border are now allowed to fly all over Scandinavia as if in one single airspace.
What are your plans to solve the current datalink fiasco? More strict mandate/regulations or will we be going directly into a new more advanced system?
Since 2016, the point where EC requested SDM to take over the Datalink implementation coordination, the SDM has supported the datalink services (DLS) implementation status both as part of the Ground and Airborne domains, even if the action was mainly a critical “recovery plan”.
Regarding the Ground domain, good improvements have been recorded from 2016 to 2021, with a significant increase of Countries providing DLS services to Airspace Users in compliance with the mandatory requirements. These Countries are highlighted in dark green in the maps below, presenting an outlook of the 2016-2022 progress. Currently, the high air traffic area of Europe is fully covered by DLS and only five Countries are either partially providing DLS (Portugal, offering only the DLIC service) or not providing it at all (orange status).
Regarding the Airborne domain, the DLS-equipped flights have increased from 40% in 2018 to 80% in 2022.
Besides assisting stakeholders in recovering from a difficult situation, SDM has also worked to develop a longer-term strategy for Datalink to cope with future challenges, learning from the experience of the last years and taking into account the expected VDLm2 lifetime. The identified solution is based on the multilink approach, as well as the timely adoption of complementary technologies;
This solution will improve the workload of ATCOs, and SDM is working closely with ANSPs to create the appropriate DLS governance and the establishment of a Datalink Service Provider (DSP). Thanks to the great cooperation with Network Manager, we are also monitoring the day-by-day operations to make sure we can identify and help solve operational issues.
What ideas and means you foresee to harmonize deployment? A lot of the deployed solutions so far seem to have only augmented the fragmentation of service delivery.
The ultimate goal of SDM in the current ATM scenario is clear to all: we need to make sure ATM modernisation can accelerate as much as possible via coordinated and synchronized initiatives while keeping the focus on the impact of deployment on the environment.
To do so, we need to work on at least three major priorities:
- Bring all operational stakeholders in Europe around common strategies and deployment, starting from the most urgent priorities listed in Common Project 1
- Establish a strong programme management approach that would synchronise, optimize and defragment deployment in Europe, built around common roadmaps and objectives
- Reinforce the full SESAR ATM lifecycle, creating a virtuous cycle that starts from R&D and gets to operations without unnecessary delays or fragmentation
We believe we can achieve these priorities by reinforcing the stakeholders’ involvement, also ATCOs, in the SDM work. We have established stronger governance with the Supervisory Board and Annual Conference of Executives, where we will make sure that involvement on expert level is optimal. As mentioned, one of our priorities is to establish a programme management covering all ATM functionalities, which will further engage the stakeholders and create a necessary structure that will help in organising our work.
Another important aspect that will contribute to more harmonised deployment is the fact that Network Manager is now fully part of the SDM, providing the perspective that was perhaps lacking in the past. Now we do have a network-wide view on deployment which will help in achieving a harmonised deployment across the network. In addition to our own Stakeholder Consultation Platform, we will fully integrate into the Network Manager’s working arrangements so to ensure that what is deployed is synchronised and harmonised across the network.