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A high-level one day meeting between the SESAR Deployment Manager and BULATSA management was held in Sofia on 17 February 2015.
The Bulgarian ANSP team was led by Mr. Georgi Peev, BULATSA DG. The SESAR DM team was led by Mr. Massimo Garbini, Managing Director SESAR Deployment Manager who was supported by Mr. Jakub Kepa, civil ANSPs Liaison officer, SESAR DM.
This first bilateral meeting was focused on discussions about the latest developments in the European ATM sector, the challenges that lie ahead for SESAR DM and BULATSA, as well as on the exchange of views on the possibilities for cooperation between the two organizations.
SESAR DM and BULATSA used the opportunity to present their recent activities and achievements as well as to identify possible mechanisms for future collaboration.
Both parties shared the understanding that the active dialogue should be continued further and in the light of BULATSA’s interest to identify the best suitable option to interact with and participate in the SESAR Deployment Manager activities.

BULATSA intends to publish in 2015 Performance-based navigation (PBN) procedures for Burgas airport (Bulgaria), validated within the NASCIO project.
The implementation of the new procedures based on satellite technology (GNSS) for the terminal area of Burgas airport, located in Eastern Bulgaria, commenced in 2012.
Two years later, most of the activities are finalised and BULATSA took advantage of the NASCIO project for performing a flight inspection campaign for validation of the procedures. The flights were executed in November 2014 by a Bulgarian flight inspection aircraft and with the support of Pildo Labs and its portable validation platform (PLATERO).
Within the program, RNAV-1 departure and arrival procedures and instrument approach procedures fully based on GNSS for serving both runway ends of the airport will be published. Those procedures will be the first PBN manoeuvres to be published in Bulgaria and will open the door for further implementation at other airports – Varna airport will be next.
The flight inspection is performed within the Navigation SESAR Concepts Involving Operators (NASCIO) demonstration project, co-funded by the SESAR Joint Undertaking.
NASCIO is a follow-up of activities initiated under the technological pillar of the Single European Sky initiative (SESAR). The project aims at integrating, in a coordinated manner, various ongoing initiatives performed within different Research and Technological Frameworks, to develop new advanced navigation concepts defined within SESAR.
The project aims to demonstrate new navigation specifications in eight different scenarios, including rotorcraft and fixed wing aircrafts as the main users that will benefit from the new navigation concepts.