The Initial Airport Operation Plan (IAOP) project, led by Brussels Airport Company and set up by the SESAR Related Deployment Airport Grouping (SDAG, part of ACI EUROPE) to streamline airport processes and enhance operational safety won the European Commission Single European Sky Cooperation Award 2019. Barbora Smolikova reports.
On 12 March 2019, the European Commission announced the Single European Sky (SES) Awards winners at the World ATM Congress (WAC) in Madrid. The SES Awards have been created by the Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE) of the European Commission in order to give visibility to the many stakeholders that are contributing to the achievement of the Single European Sky (SES) objectives through their initiatives. It is also a way to encourage all the stakeholders to continue to commit themselves to SES deployment.
On 12 March 2019, the European Commission announced the Single European Sky (SES) Awards winners at the World ATM Congress (WAC) in Madrid. SESAR Related Deployment Airport Grouping (SDAG, part of ACI EUROPE) is delighted to announce that the implementation initiative “Initial Airport Operation Plan (IAOP) project”, led by Brussels Airport Company and set up by SDAG, was the winner of the “Cooperation Award” among 9 applications.
SESAR Related Deployment Airport Grouping (SDAG, part of ACI EUROPE) is delighted to announce that the implementation initiative “Initial Airport Operation Plan (IAOP) project”, led by Brussels Airport Company and set up by SDAG, was the winner of the “Cooperation Award” among 9 applications.
This project brought together 12 major European airports and 2 Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) in one single team, ensuring a harmonised and synchronised approach to bring benefits to passengers, local operational stakeholders and to the European ATM Network. It aims to improve performance and predictability for passengers, local operations and Network operations through the implementation of Initial Airport Operations Plans (IAOPs). This will enable airports to act more proactively for the benefit of the passengers and to move towards more integrated operations locally through a collaborative set up of an Initial Airport Operations Plan. The operational coordination of all the stakeholders involved will ensure safe flights, more efficient operations and the best possible use of existing capacity. It will also help to reduce the impact of airport operations on the environment.
It is amazing to see that airports have evolved significantly over the past decades: although the focus has always been on operational excellence, airports are nowadays increasingly focused on the end customer – the passenger – in order to provide passengers with the most seamless and pleasant experience during their journey through the airport. Airport operations are a cornerstone to enable a positive passenger experience. Over the past years, many airports have worked on changing the way they operate to meet passengers’ expectations.
The crucial paradigm shift is from operating in isolation to collaboration, cooperation and integration of operations for a common goal: the passenger experience and the performance of the European ATM network.
It is worth mentioning that this project, by bringing 14 European operational stakeholders together, is a unique demonstration of how airports are collaborating in a multi-stakeholder way across the European Member States (cross-border) to deliver the best use of local and Network capacity and to future proof System Wide Information Management (SWIM) operations. In this respect, the project also enables the use of data through efficient digital automation to improve the different operational models.
This project is an excellent example of SES deployment with the passenger at the heart of it.
For more information, please contact SDAG on the following email addresses: barbora.smolikova@airportgrouping.org and luc.laveyne@aci-europe.org. You can visit the SDAG website (www.aci-europe.org/sdag.html).
