The EC Flight Path 2050 vision aims to achieve the highest levels of safety to ensure that passengers and freight as well as the air transport system and its infrastructure are protected. However, trends in safety performance over the last decade indicate that the ACARE Vision 2020 safety goal of an 80% reduction of the accident rate is not being achieved. A stronger focus on safety is required. There is a need to start a Joint Research Programme (JRP) on Aviation Safety, aiming for Coordinated Safety Research as well as Safety Research Coordination. The proposed JRP Safety, established under coordination of EREA, is built on European safety priorities, around four main themes with each theme consisting of a small set of projects. Theme 1 (New solutions for today’s accidents) aims for breakthrough research with the purpose of enabling a direct, specific, significant risk reduction in the medium term. Theme 2 (Strengthening the capability to manage risk) conducts research on processes and technologies to enable the aviation system actors to achieve near-total control over the safety risk in the air transport system. Theme 3 (Building ultra-resilient systems and operators) conducts research on the improvement of Systems and the Human Operator with the specific aim to improve safety performance under unanticipated circumstances. Theme 4 (Building ultra-resilient vehicles), aims at reducing the effect of external hazards on the aerial vehicle integrity, as well as improving the safety of the cabin environment. To really connect and drive complementary Safety R&D (by EREA) to safety priorities as put forward in the EASA European Aviation Safety plan (EASp) and the EC ACARE Strategic Research and Innovation (RIA)Agenda, Safety Research Coordination activities are proposed. Focus on key priorities that impact the safety level most will significantly increase the leverage effect of the complementary safety Research and Innovation actions planned and performed by EREA.

Exponential technologies are emerging on the market that, when placed in the context of air transport aircraft, enables new functionalities and business models with the potential to enrich the (both mental and physical) passenger well-being, improve the in-flight experience and contribute to an increase of operational efficiency for the airline and airline cabin staff. Although most attention is naturally drawn to the individual application that creates the new business values, a thorough understanding of the underlying infrastructure building blocks, the way these technologies can be used on board transport aircraft, and understanding how these technologies would impact both passenger and cabin crew during flight operations is as important. This project aims to evaluate the use of immersive technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality in relation to exponential technologies within a cabin environment, to enable them to be used by passengers and cabin crew during (revenue) flight operation. The fundamental question to be answered in this project is how suitable these immersive technologies are for: 1. Increasing well-being of passengers and cabin crew (human factors); 2. Generating ancillary revenue; and 3. Improving operational efficiency. Focus areas within the project are formulated around: 1. Enrichment of the stay of passengers in the cabin space by influencing the field of view. 2. Coordination and cooperation between passenger and cabin crew. 3. Interaction between cabin crew members and cabin crew member with passengers. 4. How the aircraft technology eco-system for hosting exponential technologies inside an aircraft should look like (Architectural point of view) 5. Possibility to extent the aircraft technology eco-system from within the aircraft into the daily life of the passenger/crew member.

Travel Wise's will support the shift from traffic management in silos to intermodal traffic orchestration by putting in place a methodology, a roadmap and the related technologies to allow for i) sharing of information between air and rail operators, ii) intermodal collaborative decision making both in nominal situations and in case of disruptions, iii) optimisation of passenger experience. Among others, Travel Wise will exploit the experience acquired in the air sector while building the Single European Sky and the European ATM architecture (EATMA) to share knowledge with the rail sector and support the progressive results of the System Pillar created by ERJU in the building of the European Single Railway Area and in the definition of the Rail System Architecture. To create an intermodal ecosystem and following the evolution of the ATM and rail sectors and their Master Plans, Travel Wise will exploit the full benefits of digitalisation, define a roadmap towards a common air-rail data space, extend the Collaborative Decision Making process to multimodality, develop integrated operations plans, and design, develop, implement and validate technical solutions for air-rail integrated traffic management in both nominal and non-nominal situations. This is guaranteed by the presence in the consortium of relevant members of both Joint Undertakings and a wide representation of end users ranging from airport and rail infrastructure managers, air and rail operators, air navigation service providers (ANSPs), other transport mode operators, relevant technology providers and research centres.

ReMAP will contribute to reinforcing European leadership in aeronautics by developing an open-source Integrated Fleet Health Management (IFHM) solution for aircraft maintenance. By replacing fixed-interval inspections with adaptive condition-based interventions, ReMAP will have an estimated benefit to the European aviation of more than 700 million Euro per year, due to a direct decrease in maintenance costs, reduced unscheduled aircraft maintenance events, and increased aircraft availability. ReMAP’s IFHM will be available for certification and reliable implementation on diverse aircraft systems and structures. ReMAP will realize this vision by addressing four main goals: (1) to leverage existing aircraft sensors for systems and mature promising sensing solutions for structures; (2) to develop health diagnostics and prognostics of aircraft systems and structures using innovative data-driven machine-learning techniques and physics models; (3) to develop an efficient maintenance management optimisation process, capable of adapting to real-time health conditions of the aircraft fleet; (4) to perform a safety risk assessment of the proposed IFHM solution, to ensure its reliable implementation and promote an informed discussion on regulatory challenges and concrete actions towards the certification of Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM). ReMAP’s IFHM solution will be tested in an unprecedented 6-month operational demonstration environment, involving more than 12 systems from two different aircraft fleets. Also for the first time, structural health prognostics algorithms will be tested in complex structural composite subcomponents subjected to variable fatigue loading. These demonstrations will be a unique opportunity to develop innovative concepts into higher TRL levels, moving towards industry adoption. ReMAP will define a common roadmap towards CBM, to be shared by the relevant aviation stakeholders represented in the consortium, Advisory Board and Support Group.