A concept of operations (ConOps) for higher airspace has been delivered by the ECHO project which concluded in 2023. It defines future operational roles, responsibilities, procedures and infrastructure required to support higher airspace demand over the short, medium and long term.

A two-year project led by EUROCONTROL that will deliver a comprehensive demand analysis and the concept of operations (ConOps) for higher airspace to allow safe, efficient and scalable operations.

The ConOps will also provide the basis to identify future infrastructure needs that would be required to support Higher Airspace Operations (HAO) and it will be developed for short, medium and long-term time frames. A key objective is that the ConOps should address operations of today’s existing vehicles as well as of vehicles and activities still to be developed.

Project Objectives

1. Conduct a Thorough Research

on existing procedures and drafted concepts for traffic management in higher airspace. Evaluation of the existing literature and categorisation of the designed key elements for the preparation of the use case and ConOps development. Identification of existing conceptual elements for accommodating high altitude operations with respect to the global consistency and harmonisation.

2. Comprehensive Demand Analysis

for all vehicles and their use crossing through or operating in Higher Airspace. Detailed analysis of the demand in terms of both volume and characteristics of vehicles and operations. This will be the basis for the development of use cases and identification of requirements to enable the demand to operate in the Higher Airspace.

3. Develop Concept of Operations

Integration, from a European network operations perspective, of the various use cases from new entrants and operational requirements from different network actors (e.g. operators, ANSPs, airports/spaceports, etc.). Development of a common baseline for operations that identifies key, shared network resources such as airspace, frequencies, transponder codes, etc.

What is Higher Airspace?

The Higher Airspace (HA) is generally considered as the airspace above today’s commercial aircraft operations and below outer space, traditionally used for military operations and transiting to space operations. Standardised airspace management procedures are applied to enable these types of operations to take place in a safe manner and with the minimum of disruption to conventional commercial air traffic.

Technology innovations have enabled the development of new vehicles and operations for the HA, opening new business opportunities. These so-called new entrants represent a wide range of vehicles and associated operations including unmanned balloons, airships and solar planes capable of persistent flight collectively known as high altitude platforms (HAPs), super and hypersonic aircraft, trans-atmospheric and suborbital vehicles, as well as commercial space operations.

The growth in commercial space activities, with the increase in space launches to orbit and sub-orbit, will contribute to driving down costs for satellite launches and open a new market for private passenger transportation. This growth trend is expected to continue.

How we will achieve our objectives

The Higher Airspace is an opportunity to implement relevant elements of the innovative concepts being developed for ATM e.g. System Wide Information Management (SWIM) and Trajectory Based Operations (TBO). In this way, the Higher Airspace could become a leading innovative environment. Fundamental principles such as safety and environmental standards especially for manned aviation will be applied as leading principles for the ConOps.

The demand characteristics for higher airspace operations are expected to evolve over time, which will be analysed through a demand analysis. The ConOps will specify a phased evolving concept synchronised with the evolution of demand in order to guide efficiently the evolution of HAO Traffic Management.

The project will follow a top-down approach making best and efficient use of past research results and documents. The method includes a detailed analysis of the demand both in terms of volume and characteristics of vehicles and operations. This will be the basis for the development of use cases and identification of requirements to enable the demand to operate in the Higher Airspace. The ConOps will be developed according to these requirements.

Consideration will be given to CNS matters from an enabling perspective. Throughout the project, awareness will be maintained with related developments taking place in ICAO and the USA. This awareness will be used to initiate convergence (within or outside the project) towards globally consistent HAO. Through three thematic workshops wide European buy-in will be secured and will culminate in the presentation of the final results of the project.

  • Demand and exploratory workshop
  • Initial Validation workshop
  • Validation workshop

In addition to considering the needs of the diverse types of vehicles operating routinely in HA, the European ConOps, developed by the ECHO project, will take into consideration the interface with ‘space traffic control’ and also accommodate transiting space vehicles through Higher Airspace. To address these topics the ECHO project has established close coordination with the European Space Agency (ESA).

In developing the European ConOps for HAO the project will address the link with the European ATM Master Plan and the SESAR Concept of Operations and maximise alignment with these references.

Project Partners

To meet its objectives, the ECHO project consortium consists of representatives from Air Traffic Management (network, operations and research), Member States’ government authorities involved in the development of the sector, as well as new entrants including developers and operators.

EUROCONTROL has been requested by the European Commission to explore the work areas for an operational concept, while EASA has been requested to launch preparatory work for the definition of a European regulatory framework for HAO. Consistency between the ConOps and the Regulatory Framework will be ensured through coordination with the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and through the project’s advisory group, which also includes the European Space Agency and the European Defence Agency.