Working closely with its partners, skeyes is shaping the future of airspace management.
This airspace is undergoing major transformations that are accelerating every day with the development of data-based technologies that enable ever greater automation. With its innovation programme focused on digital control towers and drone integration, skeyes is shaping the boundaries of an interconnected future.
The use of airspace is rapidly changing with the continued expansion of the sector of drones or unmanned aerial systems (UAS). Operating in very varied environments - particularly urban environments - depending on their use or mission, drones represent a very buoyant sector from an economic point of view but one that is also very promising for other uses, particularly medical, because they enable very rapid transportation that is not dependent on road traffic, which is often heavy. The number of drone flights continued to grow steadily in 2024. This type of traffic is really going to take off in the coming years, in particular due to the provision of U-space services for which skeyes has been appointed a Common Information Service Provider (CISP).
skeyes aims to gradually equip all Belgian airports with digital control towers in order to increase the efficiency, flexibility and resilience of air navigation services. Following the agreement signed in 2021 with SOWAER, skeyes will start with the airports of Liege and Charleroi, the traffic of which will be controlled from a single centre located in Namur as from 2026.
Saab Digital Air Traffic Solutions has been selected to provide the technical infrastructure. In 2024, skeyes continued to develop its Digital Tower Test Centre at the Steeokkerzeel site.
To support the data flows being supplied to the digital towers, skeyes has continued to roll out its Wide Area Network (WAN), which provides high-performance, secure, reliable connectivity between its various sites.
In 2024, skeyes reached a major milestone in the development of its Eurocat air traffic control system, installed in the CANAC 2 control centre and the control towers. The Mid Life Upgrade 2.0 (MLU2) project has been successfully implemented.
20/10/2024
On the night of 19 to 20 October 2024, the MLU 2 was successfully put into operation, with the main benefits being:
HERON – Highly Efficient gReen OperatioNs – is a very broad European project funded under the SESAR (Single European Sky ATM Research) programme. It aims at achieving an ambitious set of targets to reduce CO2 emissions from air transport and propose mitigation measures by developing more efficient air operations, both in the air and on the ground.
skeyes is coordinating a series of tests to introduce an Increased Second Glide Slope (ISGS) to facilitate CDO approaches and reduce landing noise.
« For the development and implementation of this first U-space in Europe, skeyes relies on the collaboration with partners likethe European Commission and EUROCONTROL and partners from the drone industry like Unifly and skeyes’daughter company SkeyDrone. »
Simon Devoldere, Common Information Services Manager
By putting people at the heart of its strategy, skeyes has always been able to fulfil its public service mission with the utmost efficiency.
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