Innovation Pipeline
SESAR Innovation Pipeline
The SESAR 3 JU has created an innovation pipeline through which promising ideas are explored and then moved out of the ‘lab’ into real operations. The pipeline consists of four distinct strands:
Digital Sky - SESAR research and innovation annual digest - 2025
The 2025 edition of DigitalSky – SESAR research and innovation digest captures a year of progress in shaping Europe’s Digital European Sky.
This year’s publication brings readers closer to the people driving change. It features perspectives from the European Commissioner for Transport on the importance of SESAR innovation, contributions from CEOs of leading airborne and ground manufacturers on transforming air traffic management, and insights from air traffic controllers on the evolving role of human–machine teaming.
The digest also reflects a year of active engagement — from major industry events to the signing of memoranda of understanding that reinforce cooperation and Europe’s leadership in ATM innovation.
Spanning the entire SESAR innovation pipeline, the publication highlights progress across Exploratory research, Industrial research, Digital Sky Demonstrators and Fast track Innovation and Uptake.
Flagships
To deliver the Digital European Sky, the SESAR JU has designed a portfolio of research and innovation activities for delivering solutions across nine flagships.
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Connected and automated ATM The future ATM system will deliver hyper connectivity between all stakeholders (vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure) via high bandwidth, low latency fixed and mobile networks. Highly automated systems with numerous actors will interact with each other seamlessly, making the system scalable and even safer than today. |
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Air-ground integration and autonomy The progressive move towards autonomous flying enabled by self-piloting technologies requires a closer integration between vehicle and infrastructure capabilities so that the infrastructure can act as a digital twin of the aircraft. |
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Capacity-on-demand and dynamic airspace Technology will enable the dynamic reconfiguration and the activation of cross-border capacity-on-demand services to maintain smooth traffic services at busy times. |
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U-space and urban air mobility A digitally native traffic management system will ensure the safe and secure integration of drones in the airspace especially in urban areas, taking into account ew and existing air vehicles and autonomous operations. One of the most challenging use cases from U-space will be to enable urban air mobility, which is expected to advance autonomous technologies in a number of areas. |
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Virtualisation and cyber-secure data sharing Service provision will be decoupled from the physical infrastructure, enabling air traffic and data service providers, irrespective of national borders, to plug in their operations where needed in a secure manner. |
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Multimodality and passenger experience Considering ATM to be an integrated part of an intermodal transport system will make it possible to share data between modes and to collaborate better to optimise the performance of both the overall transport system and the door-to-door journey. |
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Aviation green deal Europe should be the world’s most environmentally-friendly continent to fly. This requires putting in place solutions to enable aircraft to fly their optimum fuel-efficient 4D trajectory gate-to-gate, and integrating next generation aircraft that will be cleaner and quieter. |
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Artificial intelligence (AI) for aviation Tomorrow's aviation infrastructure will be more data-intensive. Thanks to the pplication of machine learning, deep learning and big data analytics, we will be able to design an ATM system that is smarter and safer by constantly analysing and learning from the ATM environment. |
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Civil/Military interoperability and coordination Dual-use technologies such as those for communications, navigation and surveillance, and other solutions that allow real-time exchange of trajectory information will improve the predictability of military operations and overall network capacity. |
Projects Portal
The SESAR 3 JU Projects Portal provides all information about the projects currently underway in the Digital European Sky research and innovation programme (2021 – 2028). The portal also provides information about completed projects from SESAR 2020 (2017 – 2023). Filter with ease the contents to access quickly the projects that interest you most!
SESAR Solutions
SESAR Solutions refer to new or improved operational procedures or technologies that aim to contribute to the modernisation of the European and global ATM system. Framed within the European ATM Master Plan, these solutions address all parts of the ATM value chain, from airports, air traffic services to the network, as well as the underlying systems architectures and technological enablers, which are validated in real day-to-day operations.
