Today at CET 16.00 CET/11.00 EDT the inaugural Maverick Awards was presented by ATCA and CANSO.

The Awards recognise outstanding achievements in collaboration, innovation, and sustainability in air traffic management (ATM). The Awards showcase the brightest ideas for the future, recognise positive contributions to the environment and conservation, celebrate the cooperation between partners and stakeholders, and promote overall excellence in the aviation industry.

Over 100 nominations were received from organisations around the world. The judging panel who will decide the winners comprises of Eamnon Brennan, DG Eurocontrol, Simon Hocquard DG, CANSO, Teri Britol COO, FAA, Capt Gilbert Kibe, DG, KCAA, Peter F. Dumont, President & CEO ATCA and Hon. Donna McLEan, Founder and Owner Donna McLean Associates.

The Ceremony was hosted by Peter F. Dumont and Simon Hocquard.

Three awards were presented:

The Collaboration Award, the Innovation Award and the Sustainability Award.

The Collaboration Award

Recognises the importance of effective relationships and collaborations within/across disciplines and sectors to achieve a shared goal.

Finalists:

ASECNA for Unifying African Skies with space-based Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) and other innovative technologies across all six Flight Information Regions (FIRs).

A consortium of Heathrow Airport Limited, NATS, L3Harris Orthogon, and EUROCONTROL for the introduction of Target Times of Arrivals at Heathrow Airport through SESAR project PJ24.

NATS, NAV CANADA, and Aireon LLC for the innovative development and deployment of the world’s first global, realtime space-based ADS-B service

And the winner is: 

NATS, NAV CANADA, and Aireon LLC

The Innovation Award

Recognises new ideas, technologies, and concepts that challenge current air traffic management norms with the potential to significantly advance performance, operations, or capabilities.

Finalists:

Austro Control and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) for its project “Plate Lines – A Method to Accelerate Wake Vortex Decay During Final Approach,” infrastructure that accelerates the decay of wake vortices on the ground by about 30 percent, making wake encounters less likely. Project funded by SESAR.

NASA for its successful, simultaneous flight of multiple small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in a complex urban environment using the UAS Traffic Management (UTM) system

Saab Digital Air Traffic Solutions and Scandinavian Mountains Airport for building a new innovative airport equipped with remote and digital tower services from a remote tower centre.

And the winner is: 

Saab Digital Air Traffic Solutions and Scandinavian Mountains Airport

The Sustainability Award

Recognises leaders, initiatives, and organisations working towards reducing aviation’s impact on the environment and making significant contributions to improving the environmental footprint of aviation through ATM.

Finalists:

ENAIRE for the design and development of a monitoring mechanism which saved, through ATC direct clearance, about 7 million nautical miles for flights managed in Spanish airspace, preventing the emission of 243,000 CO2 tons into the atmosphere.

HungaroControl, BULATSA, and ROMATSA for the SEE FRA / SEEN FRA project (South East Europe Free Route Airspace), allowing operators to fly on optimised profiles across FIR boundaries of Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania, which has the potential to save up to 10000 nautical miles, conserving 80 tons of fuel and 250 tons of CO2 emissions daily.

NAV CANADA for becoming the first ANSP in the world to implement ICAO’s new standard: Established on Required Navigation Performance Authorisation Required (RNP AR) and showing a reduction of over 4.1 million kgs of CO2 emissions.

And the winner is:

ENAIRE

Honorable Mentions:

Collaboration Award:

Ahmed Al Jallaf, Assistant Director General Air Navigation Services, General Civil Aviation Authority, United Arab Emirates
Air Navigation Solutions Ltd.
Aireon ALERT
Airmap
Altitude Angel & NATS Angel Luis Arias, Director General, ENAIRE
Asia-Pacific Distributed Multi-Nodal ATFM Network Collaboration Group
Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) and MITRE Asia Pacific Singapore (MAPS), NATS, and Searidge Remote Digital Tower Concept
Collaboration between 30 ICAO states in Southern, Eastern, and North Africa
COOPANS
Daniel García-Monteavaro Vizcaíno, Head of Drone Business Development Department, ENAIRE
Droniq GmbH
Frequentis
Frequentis, Aireon, and MEVA Member States for the MEVA Network
GOF USPACE - FINNISH-ESTONIAN “GULF OF FINLAND” VERY LARGE U-SPACE DEMONSTRATION
ICAO South East Asia and Bay of Bengal Sub-Regional Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast (ADS-B) Implementation Working Group
ICCAIA Stratospheric Operators Integral Safety Management System (ISMS)
InterFAB Coordination Platform
Italian National Airspace Strategy initiative
iTEC Alliance, a collaboration between DFS, ENAIRE and NATS, LVNL, Avinor, Oro Navigacija, and PANSA
Just Culture Platform
Luigi Mattaglia, ATM Senior Engineer, Leonardo Electronics Division Engineering
Marcello Davide Mannino
Multi-Location Airport-CDM In Australia
Namibian Aviation Modernisation Project (NAMP)
NAVBLUE, China Air Traffic Management Bureau (ATMB), Thales Avionics, Thales LAS, EASA, and Airbus
Nicolas Leon, Safer Airports and Flights for Europe (SAFE) Project Manager, DSNA
Papua New Guinea Air Services Limited (PNG ASL) and Thales Australia ATMS
PJ24 Network Collaborative Management (NCM)
SAFIR Project
Sapienza University of Rome, DeepBlue Srl, and École Nationale de l’Aviation Civile
SECSI FRA
Shared Air Traffic Services System 2 (SAS2)
SITAONAIR
U-SPACE Collaboration in Poland
Zubayer Mahbub, Director, AEROGON PTE. LTD.

Innovation Award:

Abigail Smith, Director, Safety & Technical Training, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
ADB SAFEGATE
Ahmed Al Jallaf, Assistant Director General Air Navigation Services, General Civil Aviation Authority, United Arab Emirates
AirMap
AirShare by Airways New Zealand
AIRTC
Altitude Angel
ANRA Technologies
ASECNA
ATNS AVI Afrique Innovation Summit
Aurora Air Traffic Management
Austro Control’s Transponder Occupancy Simulation (TOPAS) Project
Aviation Risk Identification and Assessment (ARIA)
Claudio Alejandro Arellano Rodríguez, former CEO of Seneam
Coflight Cloud Services
Croatia Control Ltd.
David Wartofsky, CEO, Potomac Aviation Technology Corp
DFS Innovative High Transition Operations (HTO)
Digital Tower Project
Dr. Parimal Kopardekar, Director of NASA Aeronautics Research Institute (NARI), NASA
Droneguide
Droniq GmbH
EmbraerX
HENSOLDT TwInvis Passive Radar System
IHSE GmbH
Indra and NATS “Heathrow Integrated Tower and Safety Enhancements” Project
Jeroen Debonnet, Product Manager ATC, ScioTeq
Leidos Transportation Solution’s Time Based Flow Management (TBFM) Team
MUAC ATM Portal and Customer Initiative
Multi-platform ATC Re-hosting Solution (MARS) Team
NATS, NAV CANADA, and Aireon LLC
NAV CANADA
NUAIR
Online Chart VFR Austria Project
PHOENIX WebInnovation
SESAR2020 Demonstration of ATM Improvements Generated by Initial Trajectory Sharing (DIGITS)
TATIC FLOW
Thales Airspace Management Solutions
Traffic Prediction Improvements (TPI) at EUROCONTROL MUAC
Valentin Cimpuieru, Engineering and Development Department Director, ROMATSA
Virtual Centre
xStream

Sustainability Award:

Airspace Unlimited Dynamic Airspace Optimization Tool
Alessandro Ghilari, Head of Regulation and International Network, ENAV
Boeing ecoDemonstrator Program
DesignAir
DFS Optimised Flying Working Group
Herve Demule, Navigation Engineer, skyguide
Luxembourg Administration de la Navigation Aérienne (ANA)
Micro Nav Ltd.
Park Air Systems Limited
Sopra Steria