A billion euros to help Europe fly

Large amounts of money are available from Europe to assist commercial development, especially in aerospace, but time to apply for the next funding round is short. Tom Shelley reports

Large amounts of money are available from Europe to assist commercial development, especially in aerospace, but time to apply for the next funding round is short The deadlines for aeronautics, total fund: Euros 1075 million, with many projects of potential interest to UK companies are March 20th 2003 for first call and October 15th for second call. Our advice is that, if wishing to take part, interested parties should contact project co-ordinators directly, clearly indicating what they wish to do in the project. The Integrated Projects, with the lion's share of the money are as follows: (1) Integrated intelligent multi disciplinary design in the extended enterprise, Vivace, Airbus, Philippe Homsi. (2) Maintenance including smart health monitoring, damage detection and maintenance free concepts, TATEM, Smiths Aerospace, Chris Ovenden. (3) Integrated intelligent flexible manufacturing, INREM, Rolls Royce, Mark Pietrasz. (4) Multi disciplinary approach to an environmentally acceptable supersonic transport, HISAC, Dassault. (5) Integration of technology in support of a passenger and environmentally frendly helicopter; Friendcopter Eurocopter, Agusta, Valentin Kloeppel. (6) Airborne technologies integration for improved flight hazard protection and all weather operation, Flysafe, Thales Avionics, Jean-Francois Jehl. (7) Security of aircraft operators, Safee-Sagen, Jean-Thierry Audren. (8) Advanced approach and landing, ask DTI. (9) Co-operative air traffic management, C-ATM, Thales ATM. (10) Advanced surface movement guidance and control system, A-SMGCS, DLR. (11) Airport efficiency, AFF, ask DTI. The other six major themes are: life science, genomics and biotechnology for health, euro 2,255 million; IT society technologies, euro 3,625 million; nanotechnology and nanoscience, euro 1,300 million; food quality and safety, euro 685 million; sustainable development, global change and ecosystems, euro 2,120 million; and citizens and governance in a knowledge based society euro 225 million. TS Useful links Framework 6 calls Assistant director aircraft systems technologies, aerospace and defence, DTI