Inmarsat’s London Headquarters. Photo: Inmarsat

Inmarsat signed agreements with five major Air Navigation Services Providers (ANSPs) in support of the Iris program, which aims to modernize Air Traffic Management (ATM) across Europe. DFS (Germany), ENAIRE (Spain), ENAV (Italy), EUROCONTROL MUAC (Northwest Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) and NATS (U.K.), who together handle the majority of European air traffic, will join an Initial Operational Capability (IOC) pilot, marking a significant milestone for the early implementation phase of Iris.

Separately, Inmarsat has also signed a contract with European Satellite Services Provider (ESSP), a company owned by European ANSPs and focused on safety of life services, in accordance with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards. ESSP will work with Inmarsat to help define the service and certification framework of the future Iris Service Provider, a company that will be appointed under the program to provide the European datalink communication services for Iris.

The Iris program is a partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA) and led by Inmarsat to help enable secure, high bandwidth datalink communications over Europe. The objective is to deploy more digital controller-pilot communications to improve the speed and accuracy of air traffic management across Europe’s congested airspace.