New Honeywell Project Launched to Bring AAM, Autonomous Flight to Europe

Hon­ey­well has launched “Project OperA”, one of two Hon­ey­well-led projects to be award­ed via the lat­est round of fund­ing from the Euro­pean Union’s SESAR 3 Joint Under­tak­ing, reports a press release. The work will take place at Honeywell’s inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment cen­tre in Brno, Czech Repub­lic.

The release explains, “Project OperA (Oper­ate Any­where) will devel­op and val­i­date sev­er­al solu­tions for the safe accom­mo­da­tion of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) vehi­cles in flight. The project will build solu­tions for com­plex oper­a­tions of AAM-pilot­ed air taxi and uncrewed car­go in real-life air traf­fic con­trol con­di­tions in Europe.” 

It con­tin­ues, “It will specif­i­cal­ly address air-ground inte­gra­tion and the crit­i­cal tran­si­tion from pilot­ed flights toward auto­mat­ed flights. It will use sev­er­al key auton­o­my-enabling tech­nolo­gies, and will help opti­mise flight rout­ing for min­i­mum noise foot­print and air­craft ener­gy util­i­sa­tion.”

Dave Shill­i­day, VP and Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Hon­ey­well Aero­space AAM mobil­i­ty and UAS, com­ment­ed, “We believe that avi­a­tion auton­o­my and automa­tion are key to scaled and safe advanced mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions. More­over, the path to auton­o­my will also pro­duce a long list of improve­ments for exist­ing oper­a­tions, rang­ing from reduced and sin­gle-crew oper­a­tions to ener­gy-opti­mised flight plan­ning.”

Hon­ey­well aims to focus on an ener­gy-effi­cient approach, util­is­ing a ground con­trol sta­tion, pre­ci­sion nav­i­ga­tion solu­tions and air­borne detect-and-avoid tech­nol­o­gy. These tech­nolo­gies will play a vital role in the ecosys­tem of crewed air taxi and uncrewed car­go cross-bor­der oper­a­tions.

(Cred­it — Hon­ey­well)

Jolana Dvors­ka, Senior Research, Devel­op­ment Man­ag­er and Archi­tect for SESAR, Hon­ey­well Aero­space, remarked, “We are proud to work with con­sor­tium mem­bers on SESAR projects that enable the advance­ment and adop­tion of urban air mobil­i­ty air­craft in air­space across Europe and beyond.”

She con­tin­ued, “By focus­ing on an ener­gy-effi­cient approach, ground con­trol sta­tion, air­borne auton­o­my deci­sion engine, includ­ing con­tin­gency man­age­ment, detect-and-avoid, and nav­i­ga­tion, Hon­ey­well aims to bring high­er lev­els of automa­tion in avi­a­tion.”

Back­ground

Project OperA has 15 part­ners from 11 Euro­pean coun­tries and should be com­plet­ed dur­ing 2026. The con­sor­tia will work close­ly with Pip­istrel Ver­ti­cal Solu­tions, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space and Lil­i­um, lead­ing AAM Orig­i­nal Equip­ment Man­u­fac­tur­ers (OEMs), to val­i­date tech­nolo­gies on uncrewed and crewed AAM vehi­cles. 

Con­sor­tia part­ners rep­re­sent the ecosys­tem for UAM air­craft: from reg­u­la­tors (Euro­con­trol); air nav­i­ga­tion ser­vice providers (Latvi­jas gaisa satiksme, Oro Nav­i­gaci­ja, ENAIRE and its R&D sub­sidiary CRIDA); Oper­a­tors (Nordic Unmanned); Ver­ti­port oper­a­tors (Sky­ports, Aena): to ground and indus­try mem­bers (Fre­quen­tis, Hon­ey­well).

The SESAR 3 Joint Under­tak­ing is an insti­tu­tion­alised Euro­pean part­ner­ship between pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor part­ners co-fund­ed by the EU to accel­er­ate the deliv­ery of the Dig­i­tal Euro­pean Sky through research and inno­va­tion.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.sesarju.eu/projects/OperA

www.honeywell.com/us/en

(Top image: Cred­it — airtrafficmanagement.net)