The SESAR Joint Undertaking has produced a short video meant to explain the essence of the project. It is obviously destined for a lay audience and this has put limits on the amount of technical detail that can be described without the danger of losing people’s attention.
The story is framed by an SAS flight from Stockholm to Brussels as it happens to-day with hints here and there how it will be once SESAR has done its job. And this is where the video is a bit of a let-down. With most of the characters describing the current problems, the focus shifts from the future to the current fragmented environment that SESAR is meant to remedy. As such, the video becomes a bit like the scores of others in the past which were made for previous efforts to repair European air traffic management (remember EATCHIP?), little more than a list of existing grievances with rather vague hints as to how things will be better in the future.
It is not easy to make movies on complicated subjects for a lay audience but they should have been given a bit more credit for their intelligence and a bit more detail on how things will in fact be repaired.
It is obvious that a lot of the aircraft sequences were provided by Airbus which is fine except that seeing all those aircraft flying in Airbus house colors is not necessarily the right message in terms of Airbus’ wide customer base.
I am sure a lot of experts at EUROCONTROL, ARINC, the FAA and other organizations will shake their heads and may even grab a pen and write to the SJU when they hear the narrator say that Maastricht is testing Controller Pilot Data Link Communications (CPDLC), “the first component of the data link communications that SESAR will develop” giving the impression that this is something new brought by SESAR. This is a particular let-down and I guess is nothing more than an unfortunate use of words in the script… but still. Not crediting the huge amount of international work already carried out is most regrettable.
All in all, I think this video does not do justice to what SASAR is and where it is going. Even if we consider that it is for a lay audience, it is not as good as it could and should be. Certainly the strange text about CPDLC could earn it a Worst Movie of the Season Award but let’s be kind. The video has good material in it and by refocusing things on the future and giving CPDLC credit where it is due, take two of this movie could even be enjoyable.
Check out the video here.