The project, led by EUROCONTROL and coordinated by the SESAR Deployment Manager, has the main objective to enable the data exchanges between the local Airport Operations Plans (AOP) under implementation across the main European airports (Rome Fiumicino, Nice, Dusseldorf, Vienna, Manchester, Milan, Stansted) and the Network Operations Portal (NOP).
The AOP is a single, common and collaboratively agreed plan available to all airport stakeholders whose purpose is to provide common situational awareness and to form the basis upon which stakeholder decisions relating to process optimisation can be made. It reflects the operational status of the airport and therefore facilitates demand and capacity balancing. It contains data and information relating to the different status of planning phases and is in format of a rolling plan, which evolves over time.

The NOP is a collaboration application that enables the EUROCONTROL Network Manager’s (NM) operational stakeholders to interact and collaborate with the Network Manager Operations Centre (NMOC). The NOP provides the entire aviation community with a continuously updated view of the European ATM network situation through an interactive interface. The NOP shows validated information following collaboration processes, allowing a clear understanding of relevant data for real-time operations, including:

1. traffic demand and capacity plans;

2. eventual bottlenecks at Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) level;

3. airspace management (ASM) measures planned in order to counterbalance them.

To this end, data exchange between local Airport Operations Plans (AOP) and the NOP is pivotal in order to feed the NOP with the most updated and reliable information stemming from the continuous optimisations performed within the AOPs, at local level.
Such data exchange shall be enabled by a dedicated data exchange protocol, based on B2B web-services.

The following specific objectives are expected to be achieved:

1. Review and refine the initial AOP-NOP integration Concept and related information exchanges;

2. Adapt system change requirements for enabling the NM data processing of the exchanged data and setting up requirements for airport systems of different airport types;

3. Develop and deploy the different system adaptation to allow fully tested AOP-NOP interfaces between NM and the participating airports.

The following benefits are envisaged at network and local level:

• Increased traffic predictability enhancing the capacity available in the planning phase resulting in an increased ATCO productivity (indirect benefit).

• Cost-efficiency: Significant operating cost reduction through better predictability of arrival runway capacity which reduces airborne and taxi-out holdings. This generates time savings and fuel saving.

• Reduction of reactionary delays and reactionary flight cancellations at the destination airport.

• AOP/NOP integration will provide benefits to airports through an improved information flow concerning arrival flights, and to en-route and TMA units through a more accurate traffic picture in advance of real operations.

• Once in operation, the AOP-NOP integration between NM and the involved airports is expected to save more than 5 million minutes of flight, which corresponds to 200 million euros of monetised benefits.
  

Disclaimer

A certain number of completed projects are highlighted as it was already possible to provide detailed information on specific benefits brought by these projects. In time, SESAR Deployment Manager will provide such detailed information for every completed project.