ESA title

AirTracks

  • ACTIVITYFeasibility Study
  • STATUSCompleted
  • THEMATIC AREASafety & Security

Objectives of the service

Todays’ unlimited demand in public air transport challenges to rethink traditional approaches in air traffic management and air traffic information. This is especially true when it comes to general aviation and UAVs. General aviation sector is expanding as the interest in leisure and sports aviation grows and the need for dedicated business aviation is rising. Additionally, new fields of application continuously drive the numbers of active UAVs. Both trends reveal a customer demand for flight information services. UAV operations need to be monitored closely, not only for safety and security reasons, but also to schedule maintenance intervals. General aviation planes tend to approach smaller- and medium sized airports. Those airports or airfields feel the need to provide meaningful and cost-effective flight information services to approaching pilots.

Users and their needs

Users have been identified in the following segments:

  • General aviation operators
  • General aviation pilots 
  • Small & medium airports
  • Other general aviation stakeholder
  • UAV operators
  • Other UAV stakeholder

The user segments participation in this study are:

  • Small & medium airports
  • UAV operator and other stakeholder

Currently users have the following challenges:

  • Inclusion of traffic flow information
  • Flexible cost-effective update possibilities
  • Lack of globally available tracking data
  • Inclusion of meta data

The study’s objective is an independent flight information service for all customer segments allowing them to improve and optimize operations and monitoring.

Global

Service/ system concept

The type of information relates to: 

  • Visualisation of traffic picture
  • Potential of specific meteorological hazard warnings
  • Potential of displaying special situation information
  • Possibilities for automated safety alert display layers 

The system is a cloud-based service solution with no additional hardware. AirTracks gathers the necessary information through various means from information providers and will run the proprietary analysis on top of that data. Users will be connecting to the system using their web browser or data will be ingested directly into the customers’ system.

Space Added Value

Satellite Navigation: Positioning and Beyond Line of Sight communications is the baseline for the service provision.

Earth Observation: Weather data processed by professional meteorological services is fused to generate a suitable flight information service tailored to the needs of small airport stakeholders. 

Current Status

AirTracks Feasibility study has successfully concluded the FR. The team prepares for a follow-on demonstration phase.

Prime Contractor(s)

Status Date

Updated: 05 July 2018