CICONIA’s ambition is to improve the understanding of non-CO2 emissions with regards to the current aircraft/engine technologies and operating fleet, as well as their evolution and their climate effects, but with the clear objective to evaluate and develop impact reduction solutions covering several promising mitigation options on flight operations, through the definition of innovative dedicated Concepts of Operations (CONOPS) and their assessment in comparison to legacy operations. CICONIA wants to define and assess CONOPS solutions with engagement from all concerned stakeholders: Airlines with their OCC, Network, Met providers and Air Traffic Control. CICONIA mitigation options will offer the best proposal for reduction in climate impacts, taking into account both, the CO2 and non-CO2 climate effects. A TRL4 is targeted at the end of the 3 years project. CICONIA is composed of the four main topics: 1. A weather service that will improve weather forecasting capabilities tailored for operational mitigation concepts, provide technical enablers definition and recommendation for long term improvement that will feed a better understanding of the stakes; 2. A climate enabler that will improve climate impact assessment and models tailored for operational mitigation concepts; 3. CONOPS strategies definition: CICONIA proposes to further analyse how operational stakeholders could integrate mitigations in their plan or in their tactical operations to mitigate climate impacts. A climate enhanced operations CONOPS will be delivered and assessed with representative fast time simulation platforms, integrating weather and climate models, enabling the evaluation of a large area and long time period. These simulations will support the assessment of the complete picture from climate, economics and operational impact points of view, conducting trades on different assumptions, understanding their impact on the decision making and finally providing guidance; 4. An ATM mitigation solution through trials: Investigate multiple ATM strategies for flights to minimise or avoid persistent warming contrails, through operational trials and data analysis. This solution will focus on reducing the climate impact of non-CO2 components, specifically by minimising crossings of persistent, highly warming contrails from aircraft in oceanic airspace. CICONIA aims as well at providing material to Authorities and Regulators, to analyse the appropriate rulemaking that could serve a fair and uniformed framework to minimise non-CO2 climate effects in a global environmental centric approach addressing as well CO2. Regulations aimed at mitigating non-CO2 effects through operational measures should be proven effective from a climate benefit standpoint, fair from an economic impact on the operator's standpoint, and operationally feasible/acceptable/manageable. An Advisory Board will federate external organisations who want to take part in the CICONIA results.

The Master Planning and Monitoring project (so called AMPLE3 ) is to support the SESAR3 Joint Undertaking (S3JU) in planning and reporting on deployment activities in deployment (covering both industrialisation and implementation), and when need be, to contribute to the update the European ATM MP. The project provides Content Integration (CI) service to S3JU in support of the development activities and the delivery of a coherent set of SESAR Solutions aligned at content level with the S3JU MAWP direction and ambitions declined from the European ATM MP. While earlier SESAR Programmes addressed phases A, B and C of the SESAR Vision, the SESAR 3 JU Multi Annual Work Programme (MAWP) presents the strategic Research and Innovation (R&I) roadmaps of the Digital European Sky (DES) Programme to achieve also Phase D of the SESAR Vision. The MAWP identified several Transversal Activities (TA) to make the DES Programme not just a list of disconnected projects but a coherent programme, supporting delivery of SESAR Solutions.

Since the early days of aviation, barometric pressure measurements have been a simple and robust method for altimetry. Two drawbacks exist though: there is no direct reference to terrain, and the constant variations in pressure caused by the weather lead to increased vertical profile variability restricting capacity and flight efficiency in today’s high traffic density. One goal of Green-GEAR thus is to investigate the environmental potential of geometric altimetry enabled by satellite navigation, increasing safety and eliminating waste of airspace by removal of the transition layer and supporting more environmentally friendly climb and descent operations. With the safety case for the change of separation definition already open, not only integration of manned aviation with drones (that are already using geometric altimetry in current operations) can be addressed but Green-GEAR will also look at the potential for increasing capacity through reduced vertical separations enabled by geometric altimetry. Last but not least the project, will investigate the potential of environmentally driven route charging, with new mechanisms for charging airspace users to incentivise minimum climate impact. Route charging will reward those who avoid volumes of airspace with a high climate impact and disincentivise flight planning through high demand sectors / flight altitudes except where it optimises environmental benefit overall, while being cost neutral to airspace users and passengers on average. Added capacity in the “greener” volumes of airspace enabled by reduced vertical separations limits necessary flight plan modifications, furthering acceptance of the approach. The combination of these three topics in Green-GEAR not only raises substantial synergies and ensures a harmonised approach; it also allows to identify and solve possible interoperability issues quickly and to mature the interdependent solutions in sync, reducing time to market for any and all of them.

The SMR Aircraft Architecture and Technology Project (SMR ACAP) shall be the central place to assess and integrate all technologies at aircraft level, from across the projects in the SMR pillar. Establishing the link to projects with relevant technologies in the other Clean Aviation "Pillars" and transverse projects associated with novel certification methods is part of the work plan of the project. The setup of the ACAP project is tailored to steer and manage the definition of the targeted SMR aircraft configurations with all key performance features required for the SMR architecture. In order to accelerate the maturation of the SMR aircraft technologies, ACAP will provide a digital collaborative framework with tools, means and skills enabling to continuously link all R&T activities within the SMR pillar (strongly linked to other Clean Aviation pillars) to deliver solutions meeting the Clean Aviation high level goals: reduce the greenhouse gases by -30% compared to a 2020 state of the art technology; support the launch of new product by 2035, to replace 75% of the fleet by 2050, and exploit the synergies with other national and European related programmes. Coordinated by Airbus, the project consortium is composed of a well balanced mix of innovative actors from the aeronautical industry covering almost all technical disciplines of aircraft R&T complemented by a strong foundation of Academia and Research and Technology Organisations, which will be further widened with the planned linking to other CA projects. The ACAP project is aiming to identify "best athlete" SMR aircraft concepts before the end of CA phase 1 and, based on sound analysis of the expected impact with respect to the CA objectives, to propose which technologies shall be further developed and demonstrated in a Clean Aviation phase 2.