GE Aviation announced a collaboration with SmartSky Networks and Mosaic ATM to enhance Flight Management Systems (FMS) and Air Traffic Management (ATM) for Advanced Air Mobility (AAM).

The combined work effort, conducted under a NASA Innovation Award, uniquely connects the airborne and cloud-based FMS to optimise airspace management while maintaining critical flight safety controls and serves as a key enabler for AAM, which promises to bring thousands more aircraft into the airspace in the coming years.

"Advanced Air Mobility FMS presents unique space, power, and processing requirements and GE Aviation, Mosaic ATM and SmartSky Networks working together, have identified ways to address these challenges," said Gary Goz, product director, Navigation Systems, GE Aviation. "By combining both airborne and cloud-based FMS systems—coupled with a reliable, low latency network—we can address processing needs while meeting critical safety standards for flight control."

"TrueCourse, GE's latest generation FMS, with its modularised architecture designed for today and the future, is ideally suited to play this role," added Brad Mottier, president of Systems for GE Aviation.

The conceptualised cloud-based FMS will allow air traffic controllers better real-time trajectory and airspace management planning by expanding and optimising available data inputs and processing capabilities across a greater number of relevant sources. In addition, enabling traffic flow management will minimise delays and improve efficiencies required by environmental, social and governance requirements, aiding sustainability planning initiatives. Greater accuracy of onboard FMS outputs will also be achieved through increased processing power and external inputs.

David Claassen, chief technology officer, SmartSky Networks says: "Fast access to data is central to ensuring the Advanced Air Mobility sector can safely further its operations protocols. Our work with GE Aviation and Mosaic ATM brings numerous benefits to the domain by addressing regulatory challenges, maintaining critical safety standards and providing a force multiplier for airspace management."

Todd Kilbourne, senior program manager, Mosaic ATM, adds: "Working with SmartSky and GE Aviation allows our development of next generation technologies and procedures for traffic management systems to be fully utilized both on the ground and in the air. Having dependable, high-speed, secure and interoperable connectivity enables the cloud-based FMS to further enhance National Airspace System (NAS) safety and improve capacity to the benefit of all users."