Next generation ATS platform for airport operations

Topic updates

29 January 2026

18 September 2025

Call HORIZON-SESAR-2025-DES-IR-02 has closed on the 16-09-2025.

39 proposals have been submitted for a total EU grant requested of around 315 MEUR.

The breakdown per topic is: 

Evaluation results are expected to be communicated in February 2026.

15 July 2025

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Next generation ATS platform for airport operations

TOPIC ID: HORIZON-SESAR-2025-DES-IR-02-WA4-1

Type of grant: Call for proposals

General information

Programme: Horizon Europe (HORIZON)

Call: Digital European Sky Industrial Research 02 (HORIZON-SESAR-2025-DES-IR-02)

Type of action: HORIZON-JU-RIA HORIZON JU Research and Innovation Actions

Type of MGA: HORIZON Lump Sum Grant [HORIZON-AG-LS]

Status: Forthcoming

Deadline model: single-stage

Planned Opening Date: 01 April 2025

Deadline dates: 16 September 2025 17:00 (Brussels time)

Topic description

Expected Outcome:

To significantly advance the following development actions:

• IR-4-01 Next generation airport platform addresses the next generation airport platform fully leveraging aircraft capabilities. This includes supporting the data-sharing service delivery model, interconnected with other airports and their 3rd parties (e.g. ground handlers), ANSPs, NM, CNS/MET as a service, etc., facilitating the accommodation of IAM, the interface with U-space as well as specific needs from the military.
• IR-4-02 Artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities enabling the next generation of airport platforms.
• IR-4-03 Cyber-resilience and cyber-security capabilities enabling the next generation of airport platforms.
• IR-4-04 Airport solutions for reducing environmental impact operations. This includes sustainable taxi related concepts, environmental performance dashboards, etc.
• IR-4-05 Future human – machine teaming.
• IR-4-06 Optimisation of runway throughput.
• IR-1-01 Integrated air/ground trajectory management based on ATS-B2 including the extension for lower airspace and airport surface.

This includes advancing the capabilities of the following systems:

• Ground systems: core ATS platform for airport operations.

Scope:

Research aims at developing the next generation of airport platforms, considering state-of-the-art ground technologies while leveraging innovative solutions and new aircraft capabilities aiming to achieve level 4 of automation as outlined in the Master Plan and by considering a trustworthy AI approach. The targeted airport platforms shall enable the following capabilities:

• Ensuring that all flights/missions (crewed or uncrewed) operate in the airport and in adjacent airspace in a way that maximises, to the fullest extent, aircraft capabilities to reduce the overall climate impact of aviation (CO₂ and non-CO₂) (see detailed R&I needs below).
• Ensuring that each flight trajectory is optimised considering the individual performance characteristics of each aircraft, user preferences, real-time traffic, local circumstances, and meteorological conditions at the airport. This optimisation shall be systematic, continuous (from planning to execution), and extremely precise throughput is improved in high demand scenarios (see detailed R&I needs below).
• Intelligent surface management and airport safety nets maintain airport operations safe in all weather conditions while runway throughput is improved in high demand scenarios (see detailed R&I needs below).
• Service providers can dynamically and collaboratively scale capacity up or down in line with demand by all airspace users. These capacity adjustments are implemented in real time and ensure optimal and efficient dual (both civil and military) use of resources at any moment at the airport (data, infrastructure, and human-machine teaming).
• Endpoints, data connection and ecosystem are cybersecure thanks to enhancement to key properties of information security such as, but not limited to, strong identification, authentication and integrity. Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithms^[1] should be considered where appropriate, ensuring cyber-resilience risks are adequately managed. Collaboration among airports and system manufacturers will enable an enhanced cybersecurity in the next generation of ATS platforms. Research shall consider the on-going work by ICAO on the international aviation trust framework (IATF), which aims at developing standards and harmonised procedures for a digitally seamless sky and dependable information exchange between all parties.
• The contribution during airport operations to the continuous optimisation of every flight/mission from gate to gate is systematically guaranteed thanks to high connectivity between air-ground and ground-ground components.
• The human operator is performing only the tasks that are too complex for automation to manage, teaming up with automation (see automation roadmap of the Master Plan).
• Air-ground voice communication is no longer the primary way of communicating and most routine tasks should be managed through machine-to-machine applications.
• To enable TBO phase 3 in a highly automated airport environment in accordance with the TBO and automation roadmaps in the ATM MP (see detailed R&I needs below).

Specific minimum requirements for this topic:

Consortia for this topic shall include:

• At least three airports.
  • Either include an established ATS airport system manufacturer or provide evidence that the consortium has the operational and technical capability to build the ATS airport system prototypes required for the research at the required maturity level.

The proposed target architecture shall be aligned with the service delivery model outlined in the Master Plan.

Detailed R&I needs to enable TBO Phase 3 to be considered:

The following list of detailed R&I needs is proposed as an illustration of the potential project content, but it is not meant as prescriptive.

Proposals may include other research elements beyond the proposed research elements below if they are justified by their contribution to achieve the expected outcomes of the topic and are fully aligned with the development priorities defined in the European ATM Master Plan.

• ADS-C standard instrument departure (SID) conformance monitoring on the airport surface

This element covers the conformance check that the correct SID is loaded on the FMS based on the ADS-C downlink. This is a safety net that functions automatically in the background. The aim is to preserve safety in a more flexible environment where environmental constraints may result in SID allocation becoming less predictable than in the past.

• Use of ATS B2 CPDLC v2/v4 on the airport surface

This solution covers the development of the ATC ground systems, in support of the use of CPDLC on the airport surface. This includes an enhancement of the D-TAXI capabilities to allow the use of CPDLC to uplink taxi clearances when the aircraft is already taxiing, as well as for the uplink of a revised departure route at any point after the aircraft has left the gate until shortly before take-off. The request for the uplink of a revised SID will typically be sent from the TMA systems to the TWR systems. The new departure route could be a SID (i.e., one of the published departure routes from the airport) or a custom-made departure route (e.g., a published SID but with vertical constraints aimed at facilitating a better climb profile). This increased flexibility will make it possible to uplink departure routes shortly before take-off with vertical constraints to ensure separation with other aircraft so that aircraft fly more efficient vertical profiles. This applies in particular to the tactical uplink shortly before take-off of departure routes that ensure separation between departures and/or arrivals to/from the same or proximate airports based on actual traffic rather than SIDs being loaded at the gate assuming a worse-case scenario.

This element would benefit from air-ground integrated validation activities integrating the ground prototypes (covered in WA 4) and the airborne prototypes (covered in WA 5).

• Enhanced optimised and safe runway delivery for arrivals and departures

Enhanced optimised separation delivery for arrivals and departures using more accurate flight-specific predictions of final speed profiles derived from either an evolved extended flight plan or an EPP downlinked from the aircraft using ADS-C or advanced big data / ML techniques. Research may include automatic real time wake turbulence separation on departure based on LIDAR and its integration on ATS platform. This requires the development of SWIM based meteorological services as automatic input to separation and runway delivery tools employed to manage arrivals and departures at capacity constrained airports. The research element covers the possibility to operate time-based separation, which provides valuable extra landing capacity and resilience, with RNP-defined approaches. Research may consider the application of digitised augmentation to expedite decision making. Research shall consider the work performed by project PJ.02-W2 in SESAR 2020 (e.g., SESAR solutions PJ.02-W2-14.8, PJ.02-W2-14.14, PJ.02-W2-14.7, PJ.02-W2-14.9a, PJ.02-W2-14.10, PJ.02-W2-14.11, PJ.02-W2-14.6a, PJ.02-W2-14.6b, MIAR solution 0336). This research element also covers the development of enhanced ground based surveillance sensors or sensor fusion architectures able to detect obstacles on or near the runway or predict potential runway incursions, including ATC aids for comparing traffic movement with automated recognition of ATC voice and future datalink-based clearances (work is on-going in project ASTONISH).

• Advanced calibration of airport capacity

The ATFM declared capacity of an airport is the maximum number of aircraft that can be allocated a pre-departure time of arrival (TTA) in a given time slot. It considers the runway throughput and the uncertainty of traffic demand data: the higher the uncertainty, the higher the buffer in the declared capacity needs to be to ensure that there will be no holes in the sequence due to under-delivery. Uncertainty of traffic demand data not only affects to the declared airport capacity, but also to the staffing. An accurate hourly traffic demand is essential to predict how many ATC positions are needed to be opened at the tower every hour, and therefore, the necessary staff. Research aims at developing a solution aimed at leveraging the reduced traffic uncertainty brought by SESAR developments by reducing the declared capacity buffer without effectively reducing real capacity or traffic movements. Thanks to the reduced buffer, aircraft will have lower arrival sequencing and metering (ASMA) delay, which will result in environmental benefits.

• Integrated management of single-engine and engine-off taxiing operations

In engine-off or single engine operations, one or more of the main aircraft engines are started in the taxi-out phase instead of at the gate. Doing so at the right time, neither too early (missing some engine-off taxi time benefits) nor too late (creating extra taxi-out time and potentially disrupting the departure sequence), is essential to maximise the environmental benefits, but this can be challenging at medium and large A-CDM airport environments at peak demand times.

The research should address:

• Management of single engine taxiing operations, autonomous and non-autonomous engine-off taxiing operations. This includes the direct management of tugs or the coordination with the tug manager service for airports where this service is available.
• Mixed operations aspects: engine-off taxiing vs. conventional taxiing, different engine-off taxiing techniques in the same operating environment.
• The synchronisation of the engine start-up and target take-off time (TTOT).
• Scalability aspects depending on the different airport categories where the solution(s) could be implemented.
• Impacts on other airport systems (e.g. airport operations centre (APOC), advanced surface movement guidance and control system (A-SMGCS), etc.).

Research shall consider the output of project AEON.

• Management of non-autonomous engine-off taxiing operations by tug fleet manager

Research aims at developing the concept of tug fleet manager in the context of non-autonomous engine-off taxiing operations. The tug fleet manager is a new role between airport management and air traffic control who oversees the implementation of the tug’s allocation plan during the non-autonomous engine-off taxiing operations. The tug fleet manager assigns their missions to tugs drivers in real time and adapts the tugs planning to any operational events (e.g., delays, failures, etc.).

The tug fleet manager will help managing the additional traffic on taxiways caused by the tugs and optimising the tugs usage. Hence it will provide following benefits: fuel and noxious emissions reduction, ground ATC workload for tow tugs management reduction and more precise sequencing with taxi times depending on actual taxiing technique and real time update. Research shall take into consideration the results of project AEON. Note that there is on-going work by project ASTAIR.

• Data exchange between TWR and En-Route and TMA platforms

The existing differences in handling the essential flight plan (FPL) information between TWR and En-Route and TMA platforms result in a number of workarounds used by the ANSP or vendors to close the gap on TWR - APP/ACC systems connectivity, resulting in subsequent problems with provision of the departure sequence or other coordination elements. Going further, since the TWR systems will have to facilitate the IAM elements, research aims at evaluating and determining which information and how should be exchanged between TWR and APP systems, enabling seamless coordination.

[1] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/recommendation-coordinated-implementation-roadmap-transition-post-quantum-cryptography.

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