Europe’s Air Traffic Management (ATM) system stands at a crossroads. Service-based delivery is a major focus and features prominently in SESAR’s European ATM Master Plan. Alongside it, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an essential enabler. But wider structural change is key to delivering the transformation the industry expects.
Service-based delivery already exists in aviation. For example, the Common Use Passenger Processing System (CUPPS) allows multiple airlines to operate independent applications on shared airport infrastructure through standardised interfaces and middleware. This illustrates how service models can work when governance, standards and commercial arrangements align. Similar concepts are also deeply embedded in other industries. In banking, a customer can access their account and make payments globally through a single card. In telecommunications, mobile users can move across borders without needing to change SIM cards, because service interoperability has been built into the system through shared standards and agreements. The question for ATM is therefore not whether service-based models are possible in principle, but whether they can be meaningfully implemented in a safety-critical, regulated, and highly complex ATM operational environment.
Are we focussing on the technical aspects of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) at the expense of the business and operational needs it is meant to support?
SOA is an architectural pattern born in the late 1990’s to address challenges in monolithic IT system design. While the origins lie in the technology layer of system and software connotations, the principle of modular services can be applied at the business layer, covering organisational structures.
Within the ATM community, the term “SOA” can sometimes refer to a software engineering approach: modular, loosely coupled components that support interoperability and ease of system updates. At other times, it is framed as a pathway to a service-based delivery model in which ANSPs consume services rather than own the infrastructure.
To date, the push towards SOA in ATM has been bottom-up and driven from the system layer. This creates the technical foundation, but delivering actual benefits requires a broader shift to achieve true transformation to service-based delivery.
Take flight planning as an illustration. From a purely SOA perspective, the focus sits on the technology layer: a SWIM-enabled environment where service providers publish data, consumers subscribe to it, and defined interfaces allow structured information exchange. In this model, flight plan data is exposed as a service on a common platform, accessible through agreed technical standards and service contracts. However, viewed through the lens of service-based delivery, the emphasis shifts. The Network Manager (or another designated entity) does not simply expose data but assumes a defined service role. It becomes responsible for delivering a flight planning capability with agreed performance levels, governance structures, accountability frameworks and commercial arrangements. In other words, SOA addresses the technicalities of the system, while Service-based delivery addresses the business layer including regulatory oversight, governance and operational aspects.
The technology required to enable such services is largely mature and is the result of years of focused resource and investment. The greater challenge lies in aligning the commercial, legal and governance frameworks that sit around it. This is where attention is needed. Without those structures, the architecture may function technically, but the service model will struggle to operate sustainably.
Of course, there will be inevitable concerns about safety and accountability when services are hosted externally. However, the experience with CUPPS suggests these concerns can be overcome with clear contractual frameworks and shared governance.
Having discussed the differences between SOA and service-based delivery, let’s now look at how service-based delivery can generate tangible operational and strategic value for European aviation.
Why service-based delivery matters for European aviation
As traffic volume increases and expectations change, the case for service-based delivery grows stronger. Already, airport systems like CUPPS demonstrate the value of SOA-aligned thinking by showing how shared infrastructure and service-based governance can support multiple users efficiently.
In principle, service-based delivery offers clear advantages if implemented effectively:
- Scalability, flexibility and interoperability: Reducing tight coupling between systems can ease integration across control centres and airspace boundaries, while enabling capacity to be adjusted more dynamically in response to fluctuating traffic volumes and operational demand.
- Shorter update cycles for technologies: Moving away from 15–20-year replacement programmes toward incremental upgrades reduces implementation risk, spreads investment more efficiently and accelerates the introduction of innovation.
- Improved cybersecurity and operational resilience: Diversified data sources and clearer separation between services can reduce single points of failure, strengthen redundancy and improve the system’s ability to withstand cyber or infrastructure disruption.
- Modular services: Decoupled service components can be reused, replaced or upgraded independently, minimising disruption to live operations and lowering the cost and complexity of change.
- Open competition and reduced vendor lock-in: Standardised interfaces create the structural possibility for new suppliers to enter targeted segments of the value chain, increasing competitive tension and procurement flexibility.
The fundamental question now is how these tangible benefits can be achieved without being hindered by the practical constraints which often emerge during implementation. Service-based delivery alone will not address all the pressing constraints currently faced by the industry. For example:
- Many operational delays stem from airport and ground constraints, rather than airspace design or processing limitations. Service-based delivery alone may not address these bottlenecks.
- Concepts like trajectory management, Flight Object or PBN have been discussed for decades without full realisation due to understandable vendor inertia, lack of commercial incentives and a lack of clarity on operational requirements. Service-based delivery could face a similar situation.
- Increased modularity may introduce additional assurance, certification and integration complexity, particularly in safety-critical environments.
If service-based delivery is to move beyond architectural ambition, it must prove that these theoretical advantages can translate into structural change or risk becoming another well-intentioned ambition that fails to translate into meaningful operational change. In particular, can service-based delivery meaningfully reduce supplier lock-in and create a more open, competitive environment? Or will it simply repackage existing structures in a modular form? This brings us to the next question on market competition.
The market challenge: can service-based delivery open the door to real competition?
ATM is, by nature, a monopoly environment. Airlines cannot choose their ANSP, and ANSPs rely on a small set of major suppliers. This has led many to describe the market as a “shadow monopoly” where formal competition exists, but effective choice remains limited.
Service-based delivery is often presented as the mechanism that could break this cycle by reducing supplier lock-in. In theory, modular services and standardised interfaces should make substitution easier and lower barriers to entry. However, ATM is structurally different from competitive consumer markets, and has created the following challenges:
- Lack of commercial incentives: Suppliers have little incentive to fully release the intellectual property embedded within safety-critical systems due to their costly nature and increased complexity. The likely outcome is a reconfiguration in which incumbent suppliers move from end-to-end platforms to specialised service silos. Additionally, transitioning to service-based delivery requires a restructuring of their operating model from installing systems to providing real-time 24/7 technical support to ANSPs as well as assuming greater performance responsibility. They may need to pass on the extra costs to their ANSP customers as part of the service contracts.
- Barriers for new entrants: The ATM market is relatively niche, with strong demands for certification given the safety-critical nature of most of the systems and leading to a limited business case for new entrants. However, it might work for specific targeted services, like cloud resources. Additionally, the level of openness of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) within a safety-critical system is also a concern. Fully open APIs raise issues of cybersecurity, certification, liability and operational accountability, while partial openness risks ambiguity that stifles meaningful competition.
- Assurance complexity: Modular, multi-provider ecosystems will require an evolved regulatory approach as responsibilities become fragmented across providers in a distributed service environment. This raises fundamental questions on certification to services which are substituted, upgraded or hosted in different locations and the safety cases to be maintained across interfaces.
- Data barriers: Future capabilities such as trajectory-based operations depend on richer, more accurate aircraft data, including parameters such as weight, fuel load and performance assumptions. Given the commercial sensitivities of this information, trusted governance frameworks for data sharing are required, otherwise the full potential of service-based, data-driven ATM may remain constrained.
Experience from other industries also suggests caution. Even in open and competitive markets, dominance can still concentrate in the hands of a few players. The global payments sector, largely controlled by Visa and Mastercard, illustrates that market openness enables competition but does not necessarily prevent market concentration.
Unless these challenges are addressed, service-based delivery risks reinforcing existing power structures rather than disrupting them. In that case, the service-based delivery model envisaged in the European ATM Master Plan may remain more aspirational than transformational.
While service-based delivery creates the possibility for competition, the regulatory environment ultimately determines whether that possibility can be realised, as supplier behaviour, investment decisions and procurement models are heavily influenced by economic regulation, certification requirements and oversight mechanisms.
Regulatory modernisation and policy push: the missing pieces of the puzzle
European ANSPs operate under strict economic regulation governing both CAPEX and OPEX. One of the most significant barriers to implementing service-based delivery lies within this framework. Current regulatory models often incentivise capital investment over operational expenditure, shaping procurement behaviour accordingly. Service-based delivery, however, implies a shift toward subscription-style or outsourced services, costs that fall under OPEX. ANSPs have repeatedly highlighted the difficulty of adopting such models within existing regulatory constraints. What’s more, those subscription costs will likely have to include additional supplier costs linked to restructuring, certification and 24/7 assurance.
Surveillance provides a useful illustration of this dynamic. Traditionally, surveillance capability has been closely tied to infrastructure ownership: radars, sensors and other physical assets with investment largely accounted for as CAPEX. A shift toward a service-based delivery model would move part of that spending toward OPEX through procuring surveillance data or coverage as a service. Such a transition would require regulatory flexibility, alongside a clearly defined framework for accountability and assurance.
Beyond economics, the governance and assurance implications are equally significant. Modular ATM ecosystems require expertise in system integration and orchestration across multiple service providers while maintaining end-to-end operational responsibility. ANSPs may need new capabilities to specify, configure and oversee outsourced services, and National Supervisory Authorities must adapt their oversight approaches accordingly. Additionally, data sharing and privacy introduce further security and assurance considerations. As the amount of data sharing increases across organisational boundaries, the potential exposure to cyber risk and unintended disclosure grows, requiring robust governance and protection mechanisms.
Experience from other sectors suggests that such transformation rarely occurs without policy momentum. In banking, regulatory intervention was instrumental in driving interoperability and reshaping market behaviour. A similar top-level policy push may be necessary if service-based delivery is to move from concept to reality in ATM.
Two possible futures for European ATM
Several initiatives are already underway to explore and advance service-based delivery across the European ATM ecosystem. Organisations such as EUROCAE, SESAR 3 Joint Undertaking and EASA are actively working alongside industry stakeholders on the regulatory, standardisation, technical and operational dimensions required to support this shift, in line with the European ATM Master Plan 2025. These efforts demonstrate that the concept is not purely theoretical; it is being actively examined and shaped across multiple parts of the aviation community. But where is the appetite for adoption?
It seems now that the industry faces a choice between two futures. One is a world in which ATM operates largely as it does today but runs on a more modular software platform. The other is a world in which the broader goals of service-based delivery are realised, with genuine interoperability, greater flexibility and resilience, and new models of governance and procurement.
The difference between these two futures does not lie in the development of the technical architecture alone. It lies in how effectively the industry addresses the deeper questions of regulation, economics, assurance, accountability and market structure. SOA may be an enabler, but whether service-based delivery delivers meaningful change will depend on what happens around it.
To discuss these challenges further with Benjamin Lai, Andrew Burrage, and our wider team of ATM experts contact aviation.communications[at]egis-group.com
