For the past few years, the air traffic management (ATM) industry has been discussing and considering the potential impact of emerging technologies, new entrants and potential disruptors. Of course, this has always been with a watchful eye on safety as the number one priority, accompanied by a desire for harmonised global approaches which would transform the industry in an elegant, orderly and timely way.
But the technologies from SESAR, NextGen and other ATM programmes are now being deployed. The new entrants and external technologies are already ‘here, now’, in operation and with unstoppable momentum. All this on top of pressures for improved performance and cost efficiency and increasing competition, yet frustrated by out-dated governance structures and institutional arrangements. Is the ATM industry seeing and embracing a golden opportunity for proactive, transformational change or seeking to resist or deflect some killer blows?
The Conference of World ATM Congress 2018 considers this from a number of different perspectives.