Coflight Programme reaches its first milestone

The new generation FDP system has been developed in the frame of Coflight Programme Partnership. The main objective of Coflight programme is indeed to replace the present FDP systems used in Italy, France and Switzerland with one new generation system, interoperable on European scale and able to support ATC service for the next 20 years. Acceptance of Version 1 is thus a major achievement. It incorporates a new SESAR compliant service-oriented architecture and its basic functions. This acceptance is also a major milestone with respect to the incremental Coflight roadmap started in 2006 and based on four major versions:

• Version V1, representing more than 50% of the total system;
• Version V2, which will be the first fully-functional FDP system for operational use, and is due to be delivered by the end of 2011;
• Version V3, which will provide the overall interoperability services, and will be released by the end of 2012;
• Finally, version V4, which will implement the SESAR target concept.

The Coflight FDP represents a genuine breakthrough at both operational and technical levels. It provides highly advanced functions to support the current and future operational needs of the partner ANSPs, delivering best performances to airspace users. The Coflight FDP is based on an open architecture and standardised middleware in order to guarantee the long-term upgradability and scalability of the product, and to take into account future services coming from SESAR. To address safety and conformity requirements, the Coflight partners and the Industrial Consortium have adopted, as a strong axis from the beginning of the programme, the European regulation-compliant development process. The Coflight partners and the Industrial Consortium have progressively built up the Coflight User Group (CUG), around the founding members and with the arrival of observers. The CUG will provide an innovative means of involving new partners in the programme in order to jointly steer the evolution of the product and share development costs.