French and Italian air navigation service providers DSNA and ENAV, together with industrial partners Thales and Leonardo, are establishing a long-term maintenance contract to support Coflight, the new-generation Flight Data Processing System (FDPS) designed to meet Single European Sky objectives and SESAR.

This six year-contract will cover all activities necessary for corrective and evolutionary maintenance such as studies, design, software development and associated services.

The contract is seen as a significant step to their further technical and commercial collaboration to jointly promote on the European scene innovative schemes for steering Coflight evolution and sharing cost with other Air Navigation Service Providers.

Coflight is designed to meet the Single European Sky and SESAR (Single European Sky ATM Research) programme objectives. In order to improve flight cost efficiency, optimise the airspace usage and reduce the environmental impact of aviation, a technological breakthrough is required in Flight Data Processing systems (FDP), the heart of any Air Traffic Management System.

Coflight — currently being tested in French ATC centres — provides advanced functions like 4D trajectory predictions, interoperability with other systems and datalink capabilities, supporting current and future operational concepts. It offers an open architecture and standardised middleware to guarantee the long-term upgradability and scalability of the product and take into account future services coming from SESAR