Madrid, 12 January 2022 (AESA)

The State Aviation Safety Agency (AESA) has presented the AESA Centers of Excellence at the Dubai Expo: Sustainability in Aviation, Unmanned Air Systems (Drones) and Human Factors.

The director of the Agency, Isabel Maestre, participated in the table ‘Transport of the Future and the Future of Transport’, within the Week of Travel and Connectivity organised in the pavilion of Spain Expo Dubai 2020.

AESA is involved in the future of aviation, through the Centres of Excellence, in research and development of sustainability, innovation, drones or human aviation factors, because “without safety there is no sector and without security there is no future,” said Maestre.

The director of AESA explained some of the projects in which the Aviation Sustainability Centre of Excellence works:

• The conversion of waste into aviation fuel (“Waste to fuel”) by promoting two projects, which will be released in 2025. One to obtain 80,000 tonnes of Jet Fuel, coming from the largest waste dump in the city of Madrid, and another project located in the waste dump in Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, which will produce 35,000 tonnes of JET Fuel
   
• Recycling of aircraft at the end of life, which should ensure that all parts of an aircraft are recycled or reused. This year we started the project of monitoring the complete recycling of a real plane and the study, together with specialised industries, of valorisation of each and every fraction that are currently discarded such as carbon fibre residues, plastics, seats, etc.

In the field of drones, Master indicated that from the Center of Excellence of Unmanned Aircraft, a group of top specialists from companies, universities and research centers, are working on the best way to address the main challenges identified: the integration of drones into airspace with the rest of the aircraft; the flight of drones in urban areas; and the technological development necessary to achieve all this safely and accepted by society.

Finally, the Director of the Agency presented the newly created Centre of Excellence for Human Factors, which emerged to help answer the question of how to develop the interface between people and machines to ensure the growth of air traffic in a safe and orderly manner?

Maestre stated that this AESA Center aims to analyse the best way to achieve automation, necessary to facilitate the future of aviation, and to face the management challenges that this poses for people, in a complex working environment, while simplifying for routine tasks, both in the world of ATC and aircraft operation.

The Director of AESA invited interested organisations from other countries to collaborate on these projects, since only by working in a coordinated way, companies, universities, industry and research, can we achieve safe and sustainable aviation for all.