Supporting the next generation of European air traffic management

Airbus is part of an industry team that has received a contract to improve the management of Europe's complex air traffic control system.

Awarded by the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) Joint Understanding, this €60 million agreement covers industrial support for the SESAR air traffic management programme, bringing Airbus together with two other operations from its EADS parent company – EADS Defence & Security and Astrium.

The industry team will assist in managing the development phase of a large-scale project to reorganise the European air traffic control systems by 2020.

In its industrial support role, Airbus will be responsible for the technical coherence of all work, and will give support for "system-of-systems" engineering methods so that all the stakeholders can progressively build the programme's highly complex shared data model leadership of the SESAR Joint Understanding.

With the support of the EADS group, Airbus will contribute its experience in developing and managing large complex systems involving numerous manufacturers.