Hungary's national air navigation service provider and active SESAR participant across ATM modernization, remote towers, drone integration, and green operations.
HungaroControl is Hungary's national air navigation service provider (ANSP), responsible for managing all air traffic in Hungarian airspace. Within H2020, they serve as a critical operational testbed and domain expert for the SESAR programme — Europe's flagship initiative to modernize air traffic management. They contribute real-world ATM operational experience to projects spanning controller tools, airspace management, remote towers, drone integration, and next-generation communication systems. Their participation ensures that SESAR research solutions are validated against the practical realities of a mid-sized European ANSP.
Central to PJ10 PROSA and PJ10-W2 PROSA (separation management, controller support tools), PJ16 CWP HMI (controller working position), PJ09 DCB (demand capacity balancing), and PJ33-W3 FALCO (controller endorsement).
Active in PJ05 Remote Tower and PJ05-W2 DTT (Digital Technologies for Tower), plus PJ32-W3 VC (Virtual Centre for airspace delegation and virtualisation).
Participated in USIS (U-Space Initial Services), PJ13-W2 ERICA (RPAS insertion in controlled airspace), and PJ34-W3 AURA (ATM/U-space interface).
Contributed to PJ14 EECNS, PJ14-W2 I-CNSS (integrated CNS including LDACS and SATCOM), and PJ33-W3 FALCO (LDACS complement).
Joined GREAT (greener air traffic operations, fuel reduction, adaptive airspace) and PJ38-W3-ADSCENSIO (trajectory-based operations via ADS-C).
SAFEMODE project bridged aviation and maritime human factors — an unusual cross-sector effort for an ANSP.
In the early period (2015–2019), HungaroControl focused on core SESAR Wave 1 building blocks: demand-capacity balancing, air traffic flow management, network operations planning, and integrated surface management. From 2019 onward, their portfolio shifted markedly toward digital transformation and new entrants — remote/virtual towers, drone (RPAS/U-space) integration into controlled airspace, LDACS communication systems, and greener flight operations. This evolution mirrors the broader SESAR programme trajectory but also signals HungaroControl's growing appetite for frontier ATM challenges beyond traditional flow management.
HungaroControl is moving toward virtualised, drone-integrated, and environmentally optimized air traffic management — making them a strong partner for next-generation airspace concepts in SESAR 3 and beyond.
HungaroControl operates exclusively as a participant, never as coordinator — consistent with their role as an operational ANSP contributing domain expertise rather than driving research agendas. With 191 unique partners across 41 countries, they sit inside the dense SESAR consortium network and have worked alongside most major European ANSPs, aerospace companies, and ATM research centers. This broad exposure means they are well-connected and easy to integrate into new consortia, but they expect to contribute operationally rather than lead administratively.
With 191 unique consortium partners across 41 countries, HungaroControl has one of the widest ANSP collaboration networks in the SESAR ecosystem. Their partnerships span virtually all EU and associated countries, anchored by repeated collaboration with major SESAR members (Eurocontrol, ENAIRE, DFS, DSNA, and leading ATM technology providers).
As Hungary's sole ANSP, HungaroControl offers something few partners can: a national-scale, operational airspace environment for validating SESAR concepts end-to-end. Their 29-project SESAR track record demonstrates reliability and deep institutional knowledge of ATM modernization across multiple waves. For consortium builders, they represent a mid-sized Central European ANSP with genuine operational skin in the game — not a research lab simulating ATM, but the organization actually running the airspace.
