ENAIRE awards five innovative airspace management projects in its Business Ideas Competition

ENAIRE, Spain’s national air navigation service provider, as part of its ongoing commitment to open innovation, today presented the awards for the fourth edition of its Business Ideas Competition, recognising five projects that put forward innovative and promising ideas to improve airspace management. 

Alongside this competition, ENAIRE and CRIDA, its Research and Development (R&D) subsidiary, have launched several initiatives to progressively attract innovative talent and build an ecosystem around air traffic management: Competition for Business Ideas, Competition for Technological Challenges and Acceleration Competition (on Startups). Each competition seek to capture ideas and solutions at different levels of maturity. 

At the awards ceremony, Mariluz de Mateo, ENAIRE’s Director of Strategy and Innovation, stated: “We have seen some entrepreneurs who submitted ideas in previous editions go on to develop them and even create small start-ups to bring them to market. This makes us very proud and gives even greater meaning to this competition”. 

The aim of the Business Ideas competition is to bolster entrepreneurship and help transform business ideas in real companies. Intended for undergraduates, doctoral students, professors or future entrepreneurs, the competition will play out over two phases. 

In the first phase, five finalists were selected that will take part in a three-month incubation period to develop their business plans. This will include eight training sessions covering key aspects of business model development, as well as eight hours of specialised mentoring with ENAIRE professionals. The ideas selected were: 

First prize: AVAM – Multimodal travel assistance app 

This project proposes the development of a mobile application (MFA) that integrates and centralises all the information needed for a journey from start to finish, transforming a manual and fragmented process into a proactive, up-to-date and fully integrated service; by Javier Alberto Pérez Castán, awarded 5,000 euros. 

Second prize: Aero-Trail Guard – Pre-tactical satellite validation and MRV certification system for non-CO2 effects 

This project involves the ingestion of real-time images from geostationary satellites and the application of convolutional neural networks to segment and verify the physical existence of contrails. It improves the accuracy of contrail detection and reduces false positives in complex atmospheric conditions; by Adrián López Grande, awarded 3,000 euros. 

Third prize: AeroInfra Smart – Digital platform for the intelligent management of aeronautical safeguarding for infrastructure 

This is a digital platform that enables aeronautical safeguarding and air navigation impact studies to be carried out in an automated, accurate and efficient way; by Artemio García Rivero, awarded 1,000 euros. 

Fourth prize: AEQUILIBRIUM – Dynamic separation harmonisation system for high-density mixed-mode operations 

This idea explores the possibility of unlocking the latent capacity of Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport using algorithmic intelligence capable of aligning wake turbulence physics with the commercial need for continuous flow, focusing on the use case of mixed-mode operations; by Erik Cedro Zamolojko, awarded 500 euros. 

Fifth prize: ATC Memory – Predictive assistant based on control decisions 

ATC Decision Memory Engine proposes recording and analysing real decisions, linking them to traffic conditions, weather, or time of day, and generating non-binding recommendations to support the air traffic controller, acting as a digital co-pilot; by Luna Hurtado Nogueras, awarded 500 euros. 

In the second phase, following the incubation stage, the idea that develops the most viable and compelling business model will receive an additional award of 5,000 euros and an invitation to develop a proof of concept. The idea that proceeds to the proof-of-concept stage will also be eligible for an additional prize of 10,000 euros, divided into two milestones: 

• Successful completion of the proof of concept as per the established criteria: €5,000. 

• Establishment of a company to develop and commercially exploit the proof of concept: €5,000. 

About CRIDA

CRIDA, a non-profit economic interest group established by ENAIRE, the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) and Ingeniería y Economía del Transporte, S.A. (INECO), works to improve the efficiency of the air traffic management system in Spain through the development of R&D&I projects.

In collaboration with ENAIRE, CRIDA identifies problems, proposes innovative solutions and facilitates their implementation, contributing to the advancement of air navigation on a global scale.