European Concept for Higher Altitude Operations Phase 2: Towards the integration between Air Traffic Management and Higher Altitude Operations

The European airspace above FL550 is expected to become an area where operations will significantly expand as a result of increased new entrants presence representing both aviation and space domains, with estimated business values in the order of billions of euros per year.

The European Air Traffic Management (ATM) system, including ATC’s operational procedures and systems, needs modernization and adaptation to allow seamless integration of Higher Altitude Operations (HAO) because of vastly different characteristics of vehicles and associated operational, safety and performance requirements.

ECHO-2 will build on the deliverables of the ECHO (European Concept of Higher airspace Operations) project, starting from the Concept of Operations, to propose validated solutions paving the way towards the operational integration of HAO in ATM, on three directions:

• Space Launch Real Time Monitoring Module and associated working station for the European ATM Network Manager for increased situational awareness at Network level, supporting Air Traffic Flow Management as well as crisis and contingency management.
• Procedural Package covering specific ground and air-ground operational integration issues (including for communications, navigation and surveillance means) associated with the integration of High-Altitude Platform Systems (HAPS) operations into ATM
• Procedural Package covering specific ground and air-ground operational integration issues (including for communications, navigation and surveillance means) associated with the integration of supersonic, hypersonic and suborbital vehicles operations into ATM.

These solutions will propose all the elements needed by the European ATM Network operational stakeholders for a rapid, harmonized and cost-effective implementation of a European approach towards the integration between ATM and HAO, at TRL6 maturity. They will also include assessments of potential specific related standardization and regulatory activities.