From paper strips to stripless: a technological revolution

Traditionally, air traffic controllers used a system combining raw radar images with paper strips. These strips contained essential flight information, such as aircraft registration and type, departure and destination airports, as well as various control instructions. They also served as a means to note orders and anticipate air traffic organisation.

With stripless systems, all this data is now integrated directly into the radar display, providing a smoother and more optimised traffic management process.

Day 1: Connectivity

• How can we measure connectivity between transport stakeholders at hub airports?
• Refining synchronization metrics to help Transport Service Providers (TSPs) improve passenger flow,
• Visualizing connectivity insights on the SIGN-AIR platform.

Day 2: Disruption Management

Day 1 featured the expert roundtable “Common Drivers and Barriers for Greener Mobility and Digitisation”, with insights from Brussels Airport (Elke Bossaert, Strategic Accessibility Manager), ENAC (Georges Mykoniatis, Head of Research Business Development),  CINEA (Marcel Rommerts, Head of Unit Horizon Europe Transport), and the Port of Rotterdam (Oscar van Veen, Director of Innovation), highlighting shared challenges and opportunities in driving sustainable mobility.

Key Themes:

How did you hear about ENAC?

Led by ENAC, ASTAIR focuses on developing tools for fully automated ground operations supervision. The project’s goal is to develop an advanced HMI prototype and support algorithms capable of autonomously managing ground vehicle movements. These solutions allow supervisors to fine-tune operations, ensuring adaptability to real-time events. The meeting provided an overview of the project’s objectives, updates on progress of the operations, and plans for next steps.

Led by DeepBlue (Sep. 2024 - Feb. 2026), this exploratory project focuses on improving air traffic management (ATM) through innovative human-AI collaboration and adaptive automation. The meeting included progress updates, planning for next steps, and testing of BrainSigns’ EEG device for neurophysiological analysis (hbrainsigns.com).

Led by TWI Hellas, the project aims to establish an AI-powered, community-based ecosystem to improve disaster risk management and situational awareness. PANTHEON leverages advanced digital twin technology to support policymakers and stakeholders in preparing for, responding to, and recovering from natural disasters.

ENAC's contributions are focused on:

From November 12–15, ENAC Lab proudly showcased its cutting-edge research and contributions across several key projects at SESAR Innovation Days 2024:

Masters

Masters degrees at ENAC are full-time, two-year programs designed for students with a bachelor's degree (bac+3) and offer 60 ECTS credits per year. These programs focus on scientific and technical studies, leveraging ENAC's cutting-edge research and expertise to meet the evolving needs of the global air transport industry.

Click here to find out more about our Masters programme.