The EUREKA project, in which ENAC is involve, is in the spotlight this month for SESAR

While there is a lot of excitement around air taxis, and the focus tends to be on the vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) capable aircraft (VCA). However before  these vehicles can take off the ground, it is essential to have both critical infrastructure like vertiports and relevant VCA traffic management procedures.

The objective of EUREKA SESAR 3 Fast Track project is to make Urban Air Mobility (UAM) a reality by ensuring the safe and efficient integration of vertiports – defined areas that support the take-off and landing of eVTOL (electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing) aircraft – into European airspace. By creating an integrated vertiport ecosystem, the EUREKA project is helping ensure an exciting future for innovative air mobility in Europe.

The project is developing tailored requirements for approach, departure, and en-route procedures to and from vertiports. It is also working on a comprehensive vertiport ecosystem by implementing and evaluating vertiport collaborative traffic and vertiport network flow, capacity, and operational management systems.

With contributions from 35 partners, the project aims to deliver recommendations for procedure and airspace design, validate a vertiport collaborative traffic management system, and develop a vertiport network manager to coordinate local network traffic.

Furthermore, the project is working on a new U-space service to manage disruptions and emergencies near the vertiport, such as those caused by disruptive drones or crewed aircraft experiencing critical failures. When such events are detected, the service will implement tactical changes to the U-space airspace configuration and establish robust procedures to handle and resolve the issues safely.

To learn more, read the interview of Iliyana Simeonova, EUREKA project manager at EUROCONTROL.