Gracias MADRID! World ATM Congress 2022 A great Success!

The Exhibition Hall featured 202 exhibitors from around the world. In total, seven theatres hosted 165 sessions, with more than 200 aviation experts from industry, government, labour, and educational institutions participated in presentations, panel discussions, technical briefings, and product demonstrations and launches.

“I am certainly delighted by the turnout at World ATM Congress 2022,” said ATCA’s President and CEO Brian Bruckbauer, “both in terms of the number of attendees, but, more importantly by the quality of the conversations, presentations, and technology demonstrations. This week served to attest that airspace management and integration is a vital industry with an exciting future.”

This year’s event continued the partnership undertaken by World ATM Congress with Expodrónica, Spain’s premiere drone event. The Expondrónica Pavilion, co-located at the Congress, played host to 60 exhibitors who provided attendees with the opportunity to engage experts in advanced air mobility (AAM), UAS traffic management (UTM), autonomous and remotely piloted aerial vehicles (AAV/RPAS), and other drone or AAM related services.

The Congress closed on Thursday afternoon/evening at nearby Cuatro Vientos Airport. Spain’s oldest airport served as the site of some of aviation’s newest technologies, with 10 drone demonstrations sharing an active airport airspace with civil and military air traffic. The evening’s event, titled, “Sky of the Future,” concluded with a breathtaking light show performed by 200 drones working in formation. Expodrónica and sponsor UMILES provided guests with a highly complex operation; in fact, it was the world’s most complex operation ever held at an active airport.

Another highlight of World ATM Congress 2022 was the Maverick Awards programme, honouring outstanding achievement in four categories of air traffic management; collaboration, innovation, sustainability, and resiliency. Nearly 60 nominations were received, from which three finalists were selected for each category. In the end, DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH took home the honours in the category of collaboration, with the EUROCONTROL MUAC team winning for innovation, NASA Ames Research Center for sustainability, and HungaroControl for resiliency.

World ATM Congress is produced by the industry for the industry, and was made possible with the support from platinum sponsors Indra, Saab, and Thales, and gold sponsors Aviation Week Network and Leonardo. Also, thank you to the additional sponsors who supported the event this year in various ways: Aireon, DroneUp, FABEC, Frequentis, INGENAV, Leidos, SESAR, UMILES, Wing, and Xunta de Galicia.