The board overseeing Europe’s air traffic management (ATM) modernization effort approved an updated ATM Master Plan describing its strategy to produce a “high-performing” system by 2035. The plan acknowledges that the level of air traffic in Europe will likely be less than originally thought.

In a mid-December announcement, the administrative board of the Single European Sky ATM Research Joint Undertaking (Sesar JU) said it approved the 2015 iteration of the master plan, which updates versions from 2009 and 2012. Among significant changes, the latest version of the plan “introduces a vision” for the future European ATM system that reflects goals of the Single European Sky II and Flightpath 2050 initiatives. It “explicitly” introduces remotely piloted aircraft systems and helicopters as users of the airspace, and is more comprehensive in including the military, an executive summary states.

According to the summary, the future ATM system will have “increased levels of automation, digitization and virtualization and the management of the entire flight end-to-end.” ATM modernization will be achieved by treating a flight “as a whole, within a flow and network context, rather than segmented portions of its trajectory, as is the case today.”

When it was started in 2005, the Sesar program’s “aspirational goals” were to accommodate a projected threefold increase in air traffic, improve safety by a factor of 10, reduce environmental effects by 10 percent and provide ATM services at 50 percent less cost. But the forecasted level of air traffic on which the 2012 version of the ATM master plan was based has since been reduced by millions of flights due to factors including the continent’s economic downturn, a sharp reduction in airport expansion plans, and the growth of Middle East hub airports, the summary states.

The “most likely” scenario of a 2013 forecast by Eurocontrol’s Statistics and Forecast Service is that Europe will see 14.4 million flights in 2035, amounting to 1.5 times the level in 2012. “As of 2025, traffic growth will slow down as markets mature, economic growth decelerates and as capacity limits at airports increasingly become an issue,” the summary states. “The major challenge will be how to improve ATM cost efficiency in a slow-growing market.”

The master plan calculates that achieving an “optimized” ATM infrastructure “with strong, network-wide coordination” will require an investment of €18 billion ($19.6 billion) to €26 billion ($28 billion) through 2035, of which €15 billion to €20 billion will be required for ground infrastructure. The estimated annual, recurring cost-savings and benefits of the modernization range from €8 billion to €15 billion compared to a scenario in which the Sesar vision is not achieved.