A highlight of any Airspace World is the vast array of presentations, debates and discussions available in our five theatres. Here is just a selection of what you can look forward to on Tuesday 13 May.
COOPANS & Thales: Shaping the Future of European Air Traffic Control with TopSky-ATC
Viasat Theatre – 11:00-11:25
Join Mario Kunovec-Varga and Youzec Kurp as they present COOPANS Alliance’s vision to modernize Europe’s busiest air traffic network; and explore Thales’ state-of-the-art TopSky-ATC system, designed to enhance interoperability, efficiency, and safety in air traffic management. This innovation supports the transition toward a smarter, more efficient and more sustainable Digital European Sky by harmonizing and advancing air traffic control across multiple countries through digital technologies and a collaborative governance model.
Speakers
Mario Kunovec-Varga, Croatia Control, COOPANS Alliance Board
Director General, Chair
Youzec Kurp, Thales, Vice President Airspace Mobility Solutions
Optimising Existing Capacity to manage Summer 2025
SANS/NERA Theatre – 15:00-15:50
With limited time for structural changes before this summer, and traffic set to increase 5%+ compared with summer 2024, the panel will highlight actions and strategies to effectively manage this summer’s demands. The discussion will focus on how we can optimise existing capacity and implement changes that drive modular improvements. Here are some of the big questions the panellists will explore:
- What are the key challenges that will need to be addressed this Summer – from an ANSP, airline, airport and Network Manager perspective?
- Which of the top operational priorities can make the greatest difference in ensuring that capacity is not wasted and delays kept to a minimum?
- How can each operational stakeholder make a difference in optimising existing capacity?
Speakers
Enrique Maurer, Enaire General Director
Iacopo Prissinotti, EUROCONTROL Director Network Management
Ourania Georgoutsakou, Airlines for Europe Managing Director
Patricia Vitalis, The Royal Schiphol Group COO
Steven Moore EUROCONTROL Head ATM Network Operations Division
Integrating Drones and AAM into Shared Airspace – Lessons from New Zealand
Wing Theatre – 14:30-14:55
In this session, Acting Head of Products Jonny Cooke from Airways International will outline Airways’ journey to integrating drones and advanced uncrewed aircraft into the New Zealand aviation system, the challenges they’ve faced and the lessons learned along the way.
Jonny will highlight Airways and AirShare’s efforts to ensure safe skies outside of controlled airspace, through the award-winning Flight Advisor tool, and the use of AirShare by New Zealand unattended aerodromes to safely manage uncrewed aircraft in their airspace and streamline their processes.
Don’t miss this informative session to understand Airways’ lessons learned during its journey supporting New Zealand’s burgeoning aerospace sector, and how the AirShare UTM system is evolving as a solution to address the airspace challenges of the future.
Speaker
Jonny Cooke, Airways International Ltd. Head of Products
DFS Project ViCTORiA: Enhancing Air Traffic Management with Virtual Tower Solutions in Munich
Frequentis Theatre, 11:30-11:55
Munich Airport’s control tower requires renovation in the coming years, presenting a unique challenge for maintaining uninterrupted air traffic management.
To address this challenge, FREQUENTIS DFS AEROSENSE, a joint venture between DFS Aviation Services GmbH, a daughter company of DFS GmbH, and Frequentis, has been awarded the contract to install a validation system for a virtual tower at Munich Airport. This system, set up at the DFS branch at Munich Airport, aims to determine the potential of virtual tower solutions for hub airports and prepare them for deployment. The virtual tower system will support complex operations and independent parallel runway operations.
Join this exciting presentation to explore the innovative solutions and collaborative efforts driving the ViCTORiA project and learn how we plan to assess and maintain air traffic management capacity at Munich Airport during the control tower renovation.
Speakers
Veit Voges, DFS Aviation Services GmbH Product Manager RTC
Wolfgang Bretl, DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH Director Operations Munich
Delivering two more world firsts in arrivals management
Leidos Theatre – 11:00-11:25
Intelligent Approach is the world’s only Time Base Separation tool, delivering greater capacity, better on time performance and a reduction in carbon emissions at Heathrow, Toronto and Schiphol airports.
Pairwise Separation is a totally new way of calculating the minimum separation between individual arriving pairs of aircraft. Now deployed for Heathrow, you’ll hear about how it was done, and the benefits being delivered so far.
Delivering an arrival spacing tool for a single runway, mixed mode airport is something that’s never been done before. Deployed at one of the world’s busiest single runway airports in March 2025, the panel will discuss how Intelligent Approach is able to integrate both arriving and departing traffic to further enhance operational efficiency and boost on time performance.
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Speakers
Ben Sandford, NATS Product Manager
Diogene De Souza, Heathrow Airport Airspace and ATM Specialist