Assessing the capacity breakeven performance of VDL2 in Europe

In order to enlarge airspace capacity operational changes supported through data link communications are necessary. The SESAR master plan addresses the enforcement of operational changes in three steps. The SESAR data link deployment baseline shall be realized through existing communication infrastructure. SESAR step 1 will introduce new ATS services which will initially be run via the existing VDL2 infrastructure. Uncertainties exist when existing communication systems will become saturated and new systems need to be developed and deployed. It is important to identify when data link systems and especially VDL2 becomes saturated with respect to growing air traffic and new data based operations for ATM. This paper discusses a conceptual approach how an assessment to calculate the break even performance of VDL2 could look like.