At Airspace World, I had the opportunity to have a tour of the Frequentis stand and learn about the company’s new developments. I will try to describe a few of the most interesting highlights for me.
High-Capacity Digital Tower designed for complex airports with high density of air traffic
On the first day of the show, Frequentis hosted the official launch of the High-Capacity Digital Tower, developed together with DFS. This innovative system is being validated from the operational and technical perspectives at Munich Airport under live operational conditions.
The solution combines ultra-HD visualisation on 4K screens with advanced cameras mounted on the existing control tower and serves as the best possible substitute for the tower view. The hardware is combined with intelligent automation and with integrated controller tools. The exercise aims to validate the possibility of controlling 90 movements per hour.
Trajectory Based Operations (TBO), a game-changer for Air Traffic Management (ATM)
The idea behind TBO is that the flight plan can be updated by any involved stakeholder, i.e. an airline, an Air Traffic Control (ATC) unit along the route, a departure or destination airport, at any time from the flight planning phase, until arrival. In this way, the flight plan never gets outdated, but it is being updated in real time. This information is then available to all stakeholders along the route, as all of them operate on the commonly adapted format of data, which is aligned to ICAO standards.
Frequentis is working hard on this solution, with the first key milestone, the implementation of FF-ICE/R1 (Flight and Flow Information for a Collaborative Environment) planned to be in place by the end of this year in the framework of the CP1 (Common Project 1) mandate. FF-ICE is an ICAO concept that addresses limitations and constraints of the current flight planning system. Its first release FF-ICE/R1 includes services related mainly with the pre-departure phase of flight.
Working towards the new Service Delivery Model
In December 2024, Frequentis joined a list of industry players committed to transitioning to a new service delivery model for ATM in Europe. By signing the joint statement, Frequentis reinforced its dedication to advancing the modernisation and digitalisation of European airspace, as envisioned in the European ATM Master Plan.
Fast forward to the Airspace World 2025, I learned that Frequentis is step-by-step transitioning their applications toward cloud-based infrastructure. All these solutions are based on the MosaiX Platform. MosaiX constitutes a base platform for integrating control centre applications built in a modular way and brought together into a single screen.
The trajectory ahead
For me this demonstration showed what is possible in technology and what makes it for me even more impressive, is that we are talking about a safety critical area, where there is no space for a delay or a power glitch. Reliability of these very complex systems are an absolute must. Frequentis showed that it is working hard to progress in the direction indicated by the European ATM Master plan, in a way that ensures the solutions being future proof, interoperable and robust.
The High-Capacity Digital Tower is a really cool one. While considering this kind of automated tool, we should keep in mind that at the end of a day, humans will be the ones using it. This may require adapting controllers to new ways of working and new possibilities this tool gives, for example viewing angles and areas not accessible by sight in a traditional controller working position.
The TBO would be a game-changer for ATM, flight efficiency, punctuality, predictability and sustainability. However, as we all know, in our industry we can go far if we go together. The success of this concept to a huge extent depends on how successful the cooperation across Air Navigation Services Providers (ANSPs), industry, airspace users, regulators and other stakeholders is.
Frequentis’ move to cloud infrastructure via the MosaiX platform is important work to go towards the cloud-based infrastructure that is so much spoken about these days in the world of ATM. For me this is another great step in our industry, but it comes together with the aspect of cybersecurity, the importance of which, one does not need to explain.
