ACI EUROPE and SESAR JU Publish Guide Showcasing Airport Digital Innovation
Why It MattersThe guide shows how European airport innovation is increasingly built through shared research partnerships linking airports, air navigation providers, manufacturers and regulators, rather than being developed airport by airport.
What happened
ACI EUROPE has published a guide titled "Smarter Airports, Stronger Europe: Delivering Aviation Transformation". It presents airport case studies on innovation developed through the SESAR Joint Undertaking (SESAR JU).
The SESAR JU partnership brings together the EU, EUROCONTROL and more than 50 organisations covering the aviation ecosystem. Those organisations include airports, airspace users, air navigation service providers, drone operators and service providers, manufacturers and the scientific community. It also works with regulatory and standardisation bodies, notably EASA and EUROCAE.
Industry impact & what to watch
A guide built around case studies is a way of moving research results into everyday airport practice. Airport operations depend on many parties at once, from air navigation service providers to airspace users, and a partnership that spans all of them tests new tools in a setting that resembles real operations.
The involvement of EASA and EUROCAE matters for a practical reason. New operational concepts only reach routine use once regulatory and standardisation bodies have accepted them, so a programme that works with those bodies from the outset shortens the distance between a trial and a deployable solution.
The case studies themselves are the thing to read next. They show which airports have taken part in the SESAR JU work and which operational problems that work addressed.
