SESAR Joint Undertaking | EU Green Deal in action: advancing sustainability in air traffic management - Airspace World SESAR Walking Tour reports

EU Green Deal in action: advancing sustainability in air traffic management - Airspace World SESAR Walking Tour reports

How can air traffic management (ATM) support aviation in meeting Europe’s climate ambitions? A walking tour organised at Airspace World 2026 showcased how SESAR research is helping to minimise aviation’s environmental footprint through smarter and more sustainable flight operations. Guided by Stella Saldana, SESAR Joint Undertaking, participants explored a series of demonstrations highlighting innovations in optimised descents, arrival management, trajectory optimisation, wake energy retrieval and contrail mitigation. Together, these projects demonstrated how operational improvements across all phases of flight can deliver measurable reductions in fuel burn, emissions, noise and climate impact.

Balancing efficiency and capacity in descent and arrival operations
One of the persistent challenges in terminal airspace is enabling fuel-efficient descents while maintaining capacity and safe separation in increasingly complex environments. At the AT-One/DLR stand, Fethi Abdelmoula, DLR, presented the DYN-MARS project, which addresses this challenge by enabling continuous idle-thrust descents even in highly dynamic conditions. Abdelmoula demonstrated how the project combines airborne and ATM enhancements, including permanent resume trajectory functions, optimised aircraft configuration management, dynamic arrival route deployment and enhanced air-ground data exchanges, helping preserve optimal descent profiles without compromising operational constraints.

Closely linked to this is the challenge of managing arrival flows more flexibly to avoid inefficiencies such as vectoring and holding. At the Frequentis stand, Simona Pierattelli, Leonardo, and Michael Kupfer, Frequentis, presented the GALAAD project, which rethinks how aircraft are sequenced and routed in terminal areas. Moving from fixed to dynamic PBN route allocation, the demonstration showcased enhanced arrival management supported by Frequentis-Orthogon AMAN and the evolution of the 4-Flight platform. Through real-time simulations, the speakers illustrated how controllers can manage dynamic route proposals using both voice and controller–pilot data link communications (CPDLC), improving fuel efficiency while maintaining safety and capacity.

Reducing noise impact around airports remains another key environmental challenge, particularly during the final approach phase. At the skeyes stand, KseniiaKozhevnikova, skeyes, presented the HERON project, which explores increased step glide slope (ISGS) operations to enable quieter approaches. Drawing on operational trials at Brussels Airport, Kozhevnikova presented measured noise reductions of up to 2 dB for steeper glide slopes, alongside detailed analysis of noise contours, fuel impacts and human performance. The results confirmed the potential of these procedures while highlighting considerations for their safe and effective deployment.

Scaling trajectory optimisation across different airspace environments
Beyond terminal operations, improving trajectory efficiency at scale requires solutions that work across both oceanic and continental airspace. A key challenge is enabling aircraft to take advantage of more efficient routing opportunities while ensuring coordination between multiple stakeholders.

At the NATS stand, Sarah Nelson, NATS, together with Christophe Labous, Guillaume Ameline and Laurent Chapon, DSNA, introduced the GEESE oceanic solution, addressing the challenge of reducing fuel burn on long-haul flights. Through an interactive role-playing exercise, participants explored wake energy retrieval (WER) operations, where aircraft fly in cooperative formations to benefit from reduced drag. The presenters demonstrated how dispatchers, pilots and controllers coordinate to identify optimal pairings and manage trajectory adjustments, supported by results from flight trials showing the potential for around 5% fuel savings.

Bringing these benefits closer to home introduces additional complexity, as European airspace is more constrained and traffic density is higher. At the Danube FAB stand, Todor Atanasov, BULATSA, and Muhammad Farook, Frequentis, presented the GEESE continental solution, focusing on how WER operations can be integrated into European ATM. Drawing on real-time simulations in Sofia air traffic control, the team demonstrated how controllers manage WER flights using adapted procedures and tools, marking an important step towards operational feasibility in dense airspace environments.

Addressing non-CO₂ climate effects through integrated optimisation
While reducing fuel burn remains essential, tackling aviation’s full climate impact requires addressing non-CO₂ effects such as contrails. This introduces the challenge of optimising trajectories across the entire flight, balancing environmental benefits with operational constraints.

At the final stop, Philippe Masson, Airbus, presented the CICONIA project, which focuses on integrated flight optimisation from departure to arrival. Masson introduced the concept of operations for contrail-aware trajectory planning, showing how different stakeholders can collaboratively adjust flight paths to minimise climate impact. Supported by flight trial results and SESAR key performance indicators, the presentation highlighted the trade-offs between environmental gains, fuel use and workload, and the tools needed to support these decisions in real operations.