Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) is a collaborative project to completely overhaul European airspace and its

air traffic management 334x334px, Air traffic management (ATM) is an aviation term encompassing all systems that assist aircraft to depart from an aerodrome, transit airspace, and land at a destination aerodrome, consisting of air traffic services (ATS) including air tr ...

(ATM). The actual program is managed by the

SESAR Joint Undertaking The Single European Sky ATM Research 3 Joint Undertaking is an institutionalised European public-private partnership, established in 2021, to accelerate through research and development the delivery of the Digital European Sky, as part of the ...

as a

public–private partnership A public–private partnership (PPP, 3P, or P3) is a long-term arrangement between a government and private sector institutions.Hodge, G. A and Greve, C. (2007), Public–Private Partnerships: An International Performance Review, Public Adminis ...

(PPP).

Project

The SESAR project is composed of three phases: * a Definition phase (2004–2008) to deliver an ATM master plan defining the content, development, and deployment plans of the next generation of ATM systems. This definition phase is led by Eurocontrol, and co-funded by the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...

under the

Trans-European Transport Networks The Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) is a planned network of roads, railways, airports and water infrastructure in the European Union. The TEN-T network is part of a wider system of Trans-European Networks (TENs), including a telecommun ...

program and executed by a large consortium of all air transport stakeholders. * a Development phase (2008–2013), to produce the required new generation of technological systems and components as defined in the definition phase. This phase (budget: 2.1 billion euro) is managed by the

. * a Deployment phase (2014–2020), for large-scale production and implementation of the new air traffic management infrastructure, composed of fully harmonized and interoperable components which guarantee high-performance air transport activities in Europe. SESAR's target concept relies on several new key features: * the network operation plan, a dynamic rolling plan for continuous operations that ensures a common view of the network situation; * full integration of airport operations as part of ATM and the planning process; * trajectory management, reducing the constraints of airspace organisation to a minimum; * new aircraft separation modes, allowing increased safety, capacity and efficiency; * system-wide information management ( SWIM), securely connecting all the ATM stakeholders which will share the same data; * humans as the central decision-makers: controllers and pilots will be assisted by new automated functions to ease their workload and handle complex decision-making processes. The SESAR project has a parallel in the NextGen project within the United States.

History

In the 20th century, unlike United States, Europe did not have a single civilian airspace – i.e., one in which air navigation is managed at the European level. Furthermore, European airspace is among the busiest in the world with over 33,000 flights daily and airport density in Europe is very high. This makes

air traffic control Air traffic control (ATC) is a service provided by ground-based air traffic controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through a given section of controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled airsp ...

more complex. The EU Single European Sky (SES) legislature was drawn to overcome the air control management's fragmentation and flight capacity limitation by structuring airspace and air navigation services at a pan-European level. To develop the needed technological capacity, the SESAR program was initiated in 2004 as a continuation of a smaller effort by the Eurocontrol SESAME project. In June 2010, European and American authorities reached a preliminary agreement on interoperability between their future air traffic management systems, SESAR and NextGen. SESAR Deployment Phase was launched on December 5, 2014. This is seen as a key milestone of the SESAR project: a partnership agreement was signed by EU's Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc and the SESAR Deployment Alliance consortium.

Dates

* November 2000: establishment of the SES regulation. * 2004: SESAR definition phase started. * June 2008: SES-II regulation adopted. * 8 December 2008: inauguration of the SESAR Joint Undertaking. * 3 June 2009: official start of the SESAR development programme. * 12 June 2009: SESAR Joint Undertaking signs agreement with 16 partners totalling €1.9 billion for the creation of the Europe's future ATM system. * 19 July 2010: SESAR Joint Undertaking opens to Associate partners. * 8 March 2011: The first SESAR Release during the SESAR Forum at ATC Global in Amsterdam. * October 2012: European ATM Master Plan – Edition 2 was issued as pdfhttps://www.atmmasterplan.eu/download/29

References

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Bibliography

Single European Sky (SES)

The European ATM Master plan

SESAR Joint Undertaking Top Management speaking at the Forum on Integration & Harmonization of NextGen and SESAR in Montreal

External links

SESAR Joint Undertaking website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Single European Sky Atm Research Projects established in 2004 European Commission projects Air traffic control in Europe Air traffic control organizations International aviation organizations Information technology organizations based in Europe