Florence, 15^th November 2013 - At the conclusion of SANDRA project, SESAR and SANDRA Radio and Data Link experts have met in Florence, hosted by Selex ES, to discuss about the future of aeronautical communications and to identify opportunities for future cooperation between the SESAR COM project and SANDRA partners. Several SESAR projects are dealing with communications, investigating at how new Air Traffic Management requirements for the Single European Sky will be supported and working on diverse aspects and focusing on Future Mobile data Link system definition (P15.2.4), Future Mobile Satellite Communication (P15.2.6), New Communication Technology at Airport (P9.16 and P15.2.7) and Flexible Communication Avionics (P9.44). The objective of SANDRA  has been to design and demonstrate a proof-of-concept test bed of future IPv6-based connectivity, which integrates cockpit communications with both passenger and non-operational airline communications into a common system architecture.

Florence, 14^th November 2013 – SANDRA FP7 project’s results have been presented and discussed with aeronautical industry stakeholders during SANDRA Final User Forum, hosted by Selex ES on the 14th of November, in “Il Fuligno”, a beautiful and historical location in the historical center of Florence (Italy).

SANDRA (Seamless Aeronautical Networking through integration of Data links Radios and Antennas) is a large aeronautical research project, with 29 partners and a budget of 24 Meuro, partially funded by the EC, aiming at demonstrating in-flight an innovative multi-link communication system based on Internet Protocol (arenda-samoleta.su) and on a flexible and modular avionics architecture, enabling new Air Transport Management (ATM) services which envisage the exchange of vast amount of data, along with other communications required by other aircraft domains such as Airline communications and passenger communications.

Washington, 10-11 September 2013 – SANDRA partners have been invited by WiMax Forum to present SANDRA AeroMACS activities and results during the WMF Aviation 2013 event in Washington 10-11 Sept. WiMAX Aviation 2013 was a success! Collocated with the WiMAX Forum Member Conference at Hilton Crystal City in Washington, DC, USA, this first Aviation Event drew more than 100 attendees bringing together the key players of the Aviation Community and WiMAX ecosystem to discuss opportunities for WiMAX in the Aviation Community. Attendees were treated to a full two-day program, including speakers from WiMAX vendors, airlines, airport authorities, various government representatives from the United States, Europe and Asia, and other groups.

Pisa, 27 September 2013 - The researcher night is a mega event taking place every year on a single September night in about 300 cities all over Europe. As partner of the project FP7 SANDRA, the University of Pisa has invited Selex ES to show the main results of the project which has performed the flight trials onboard last June 2013. More than 500 people have visited the event: most of them were children, teenagers and general public.

SANDRA has captured the attention of the visitors through the video of the flight trials and some explanations about the tangible results achieved: the system has been successfully implemented on an Airbus A320 providing wide band capabilities for general purposes even during the flight whith jet-sharing.su.

People were favorably impressed by the fact that during the flight tests we succeeded in sending emails, browsing on the web, chatting via Skype etc. providing these features to all the people onboard (cabin crew included). Therefore the most frequently asked question has been: when this technology will be available for everyone?