Weekly review #102- 9th June

ANSP news

• Swedavia starts enabling remote air traffic services - The Swedish Civil Aviation Administration has commissioned the new remote tower centre at Stockholm Arlanda Airport for distant air traffic control at some Swedavia airports. 
• SESAR JU Executive Director announces departure - The SESAR Joint Undertaking today announced that Florian Guillermet, Executive Director, will step down from his role on 4 July to take up a new position as CEO of DSNA, France’s ANSP.

Airports news

• The airport drone threat: a storm in a teacup? - After the 2018 Gatwick airport drone incident, drones started to be perceived as a potential threat by the general public, creating issues also for regular aviation. 

Market news

• New communications technology for Colombia’s ATC towers - The Civil Aviation Authority of Colombia is to install Rohde & Schwarz’s IP based voice communications system, CERTIUM, systems at 36 airports across the country. 

Context information

• The EU Council reached an agreement on air traffic management reform - The EU Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council, held in Luxembourg, adopted a common position on the European Commission’s legislative proposal on the reform of the Single European Sky.

Reports and data

• Updated EUROCONTROL Traffic Scenarios for 2021: Clear hope for some recovery this summer and beyond - EUROCONTROL has issued a new set of Traffic Scenarios detailing the monthly evolution for the period up to December 2021. Air traffic throughout Europe was 61% down in May 2021 compared to May 2019. 

Research and innovation

• SESAR to demonstrate space-enabled air traffic control - Plans are underway by SESAR members and partners to demonstrate the feasibility of using low-orbit satellites to provide voice communications to manage aircraft in oceanic regions of the world. 
• Successful completion of the PDA Innovation project - Ineco - Ineco has finalized its internal innovation project PDA (Postprocessing Delay Analyzer), a Big-Data platform enabled to store and process historical air traffic data obtained from Eurocontrol B2B services.
• Saab and Varjo Bring Virtual Reality to Flight Simulators - Saab and Varjo Technologies work together to revolutionise flight simulators. The Finnish company Varjo has developed a human eye resolution mixed reality (XR) technology that will be integrated into all Saab Gripen E/F simulators.

UAV and UTM

• Thales and Airspace Link partner to support BVLOS operations in low-level airspace - Unmanned airspace - A partnership between Thales and geospatial information management company Airspace Link aims to provide safe integration of UAS into low altitude airspace where the systems are BVLOS of operators. 
• Poland announces EUR164 million investment in U-space and related services - Thanks to the implementation of the investments included in the National Recovery Plan, Poland has a chance to become one of the European leaders in the field of UAVs. 
• Thales and Clearance work together to manage drone flights near Lille airport - Unmanned airspace - Two specialist companies providing UTM services, Clearance and Thales, are working together to interconnect their respective platforms to allow drone pilots to create a flight plan on the Clearance platform. 
• NASA publishes the concept of operations for high-density vertiport operations - Unmanned airspace - NASA has released a concept of operations for high-density vertiport operations. The publication provides a guide for future technology development, perspectives on how vertiports should be integrated and defines the roles and responsibilities of vertiport users.
• UK CAA publishes guidance to support beyond visual line of sight operations - Unmanned airspace - The CAA has published guidance describing how the regulator is working with the industry to get progress towards safe routing beyond visual line of sight flights in the UK.