Airbus has delivered the first FANS-C-equipped A320 to easyJet. As part of Europe’s SESAR Air Traffic Management (ATM) research programme, this aircraft – and others to follow – will take part in the Airbus-led project “Demonstration of air traffic management improvements generated by 4D Initial Trajectory Information Sharing” (DIGITS) The DIGITS project will demonstrate the sharing of an aircraft's predicted trajectory data with air traffic control (ATC).

The benefits of FANS-C include: more accurate flight plans, more optimised trajectory computation and acceptance processes, better alignment of airlines’ and ATM planned trajectories, enhancement of aircraft traffic predictions and improvement of demand/capacity network calculations. Environmental benefits include lower fuel consumption and reduced noise impact.

From now until mid-2020, seven European airlines, which are all taking part in DIGITS, will progressively equip up to 100 of their A320 Family aircraft with the FANS-C technology. The demonstration, which will last more than a year, will collect data from over 20,000 revenue flights, allowing stakeholders to demonstrate benefits of this technology during live day-to-day operations.

The seven airlines taking part in the DIGITS programme are: Air France, British Airways, easyJet, Iberia, Novair, Thomas Cook and Wizz Air.

Airbus achieved the world’s first certification of FANS-C 4D avionics on a commercial aircraft in November 2018 – the initial aircraft type being the A320 Family.