On 1 July, Andreas Boschen officially began his role as Executive Director of the SESAR 3 JU. During the WATMC event, ATM Magazine had the opportunity to catch up with him about his new role.
He joins the SESAR 3 JU from the European Commission where he was involved in all aspects of transport policy, including military and civil aviation and how these areas should be regulated. Working in the Commission’s Directorate General for Transport (DG MOVE), he helped to shape the Single European Sky initiative and managed the deployment of EU funds to support these efforts. This move sees him now focusing his attention upstream to the research and innovation part of the SESAR lifecycle.
Considering the lessons learned in his prior roles and how they relate to his new position, he stressed the importance of partnerships at the European level versus only working at the local or national level. The industry can only benefit if we work together towards a common technology goal, he noted.
Andreas’ immediate focus will be to establish a strong connection with the 55 members that make up the partnership. With that in mind, he plans to visit members and partners, and many of the partnership’s testing sites at towers, control centres, and research facilities across Europe.
Over time, his goals for the organisation address many topics. They include ensuring the successful completion of the 67 ongoing projects within the framework of SESAR 2020, while ramping up the new Digital European Sky programme. A first SESAR 3 JU call has already been launched for research and innovation projects, for which he encouraged the community to submit their proposals.
Ultimately, the partnership must accelerate the delivery of ‘ready-to-use’ green and smart solutions for ATM’s stakeholders to implement, he said. The challenge is to obtain buy-in from the operational stakeholders and maintain a strong collaboration with institutional partners, such as the Commission, EASA, EUROCONTROL, SESAR Deployment Manager, and EUROCAE.
Andreas is looking forward to working with the people and partner organisations to see the benefits technology can bring to our aviation ecosystem.
