The MAIA project is pleased to share a newly published scientific article that advances our understanding of how emerging mobility solutions (including Urban Air Mobility (UAM) and Connected, Cooperative and Automated Mobility (CCAM) ) could reshape airport accessibility in the coming years.
The paper presents a robust and flexible demand-modelling methodology designed to forecast future modal split for airport access, integrating both existing and hypothetical transport modes within a discrete choice modelling (DCM) framework. Using survey data from over 29,000 passengers at Brussels Airport, the authors calibrate a nested logit model capable of incorporating new options such as UAM and CCAM even before these services are widely deployed.
The study applies this model to a synthetic airport passenger population and estimates that, under realistic future scenarios, UAM could capture 4.7% and CCAM 6.8% of airport access trips, primarily drawing users from taxis and private cars. The methodology is adaptable and assumption-agnostic, offering a valuable tool for policymakers, planners, and researchers as Europe prepares for the introduction of these innovative services.
Thank you for the amazing work on the paper to MAIA consortium members, Behzad Bamdad Mehrabani (Transport & Mobility Leuven), Vincent Henrion, Sebastian Hörl, Nikola Ivanov, Bojana Mirkovic, Juan Blasco Puyuelo, and Elke Bossaert.
đź”— Read the full publication on ScienceDirect:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213624X25002913?via%3Dihub
On 4 November 2025, the MAIA SESAR Project successfully held its Final Event at Fira Barcelona, bringing together stakeholders from research, industry, public authorities, and the wider mobility ecosystem to explore how innovative multimodal solutions can strengthen the connection between airports and city centres. With a strong turnout and highly engaged audience, the event marked an important milestone for the project’s conclusion.
The morning began with a brief welcome and an introduction to the MAIA event, followed by a presentation from the project officer of the SESAR Joint Undertaking, situating the project within the wider SESAR funding framework and its role in advancing smart, sustainable mobility across Europe.
Participants then received a comprehensive overview of the MAIA project, its objectives, and its mission to support regions and airports in navigating the transition toward more integrated, data-driven, and future-proof transport systems.
A central part of the event was dedicated to the presentation of MAIA’s three main workstreams:
Each presentation highlighted key findings, methodologies, and real-world use cases, followed by an engaged Q&A session with the audience.
More detailed information on the MAIA tools and results is available here:
After a short coffee break, the event continued with a dynamic panel discussion on “Mobility innovations supporting airport integration into multimodal regional connectivity.”
Experts from cities, airports, industry, and research reflected on the opportunities and challenges of future mobility systems. Some key insights from the debate included:
Before concluding, the project team presented the overall structure and current state of work of the White Paper “Mobility Innovations and Airport Access: Lessons Learnt from MAIA and Way Forward.”
The document brings together the project’s main findings and outlines the path forward for regions and airports aiming to embrace smarter, greener, and more connected mobility systems.
The above-mentioned White Paper is going to be finalised by the end of November 2025. Following this, it must go through an official review process by the funding authority SESAR Joint Undertaking. The whole text is going to be publicly available for all those interested in the MAIA website and will be further disseminated via the MAIA social media channels.
The MAIA Final Event successfully demonstrated how collaborative research, cutting-edge modelling tools, and cross-sector innovation can support the evolution of European transport systems. The high level of participation and active engagement throughout the morning underscored the relevance and urgency of improving airport–city connectivity in a multimodal and sustainable way.
The project team extends its warm thanks to all speakers, panellists, participants, and partners who contributed to the success of the event and the MAIA project as a whole.
The MAIA project has produced MAIA-UAM, a framework that supports the integration of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) into European cities. With drones and air taxis expected to play an increasing role in logistics, emergency response, and passenger transport, this outcome provides tools to assess their impact on urban environments.
Built on the MAIA-Engine, MAIA-UAM models the environmental, social, and operational dimensions of UAM. It allows users to simulate scenarios such as parcel deliveries, emergency services, or passenger transport, and to analyse their consequences for citizens and infrastructure.
The framework addresses key challenges, including:
The exploratory studies described in Deliverable 3.2 (D3.2) Exploratory Research Report show how MAIA-UAM can provide actionable evidence for urban planners, regulators, and service providers. It ensures that the rollout of UAM services is aligned with sustainability goals and social expectations.
By providing a robust knowledge base, MAIA-UAM helps cities and policymakers prepare for the challenges and opportunities that UAM will bring in the coming years.
Discover more about the MAIA-UAM during the MAIA & MUSE joint final event in Barcelona.
The MAIA project has developed MAIA-CCAM, a simulation framework dedicated to Connected, Cooperative, and Automated Mobility (CCAM). This outcome explores how automated and connected vehicles interact with each other, with road infrastructure, and with wider transport networks, including air traffic.
MAIA-CCAM provides a virtual testing ground where the benefits, challenges, and risks of CCAM deployment can be thoroughly assessed. Key areas of focus include:
Findings presented in Deliverable 3.2 (D3.2) Exploratory Research Report confirm that MAIA-CCAM is a valuable tool for assessing the impacts of CCAM on sustainability, efficiency, and resilience in Europe’s transport systems.
As Europe prepares for the introduction of automated vehicles, MAIA-CCAM offers data-driven insights to help cities, regions, and policymakers design mobility solutions that are effective, sustainable, and aligned with public needs.
Discover more about the MAIA-CCAM during the MAIA & MUSE joint final event in Barcelona.
The MAIA project has developed the MAIA-Engine, a next-generation simulation environment that applies artificial intelligence and advanced modelling techniques to explore the future of transport and airspace operations.
The Engine supports decision-makers in assessing complex, interlinked systems where aviation, ground transport, and urban life interact. It brings together diverse datasets, such as air traffic, mobility flows, and environmental information, and transforms them into exploratory scenarios that show the potential consequences of deploying new mobility technologies.
Unlike traditional modelling approaches, the MAIA-Engine enables the comparison of multiple “what-if” scenarios, making it possible to identify trade-offs and synergies between efficiency, safety, sustainability, and societal acceptance.
The exploratory research presented in Deliverable 3.2 (D3.2) Exploratory Research Report demonstrates how the MAIA-Engine can:
By making complexity visible and manageable, the MAIA-Engine contributes to SESAR’s ambition of building smarter, more sustainable, and citizen-focused aviation services.
Discover more about the MAIA-Engine during the MAIA & MUSE joint final event in Barcelona.
The first objective of the MAIA project was to identify the opportunities and risks associated with CCAM and UAM within a multimodal airport access context, with the objective of understanding the current situation and defining the high-level requirements for MAIA solutions.
The partners worked on three main tasks during WP2:
The results from the analysis show that travel times are the key challenge for airport accessibility. Effective solutions should aim to reduce the number of transfers required to reach the airport and ensure travel time reliability. Passengers need assurance that they can reach the terminal in time for boarding.
Additionally, from a strategic airport perspective, it is crucial that any new access mode seeks to reduce GHG emissions (e.g., by complementing public transport rather than competing with it, thereby attracting trips from more polluting modes) and to minimize noise pollution.
The methodology and results of WP2 can be found in the D2.1 deliverable now available in our website: https://maiasesarproject.eu/resource/deliverable-d2-1/
The goal of MAIA is to support the design and implementation of multimodal airport access solutions. The project develops a set of data analytics and modelling tools as a basis for two passenger mobility innovations: shared autonomous vehicle fleets and unmanned aerial vehicle fleets. You can find more information on the MAIA tools in the project’s “about” section.
To shape these tools, diverse perspectives are needed. Indeed, while new smart mobility concepts are flourishing, with a huge potential for the aviation sector, it remains unclear how these innovation can complement existing airport access solutions, and how they can apply to different airport contexts.
We need the new mobility solution developers, their providers and economic ecosystem, the service operators, and the transport organising authorities to come together with the airport operators, the airlines, the infrastructure managers, and the aerial traffic management and service providers, to identify the benefits of mobility innovations for airports’ and air travel’s sustainability and efficiency, and to support the exploitation of these benefits.
To involve the stakeholders listed above, MAIA organises workshops where research outcomes are presented to collect feedbacks and integrate multiple perspectives in shaping the results.
The first MAIA workshop took place in December 2023 at POLIS offices in Brussels, gathering about 15 participants, with the objective of defining airport access challenges, and the role of mobility innovations in solving them. A list of challenges set up by the MAIA partners with desktop research and a first round of Delphi poll was presented. The inputs collected from existing studies and project results, ranked and completed by experts, were discussed in person with airport, airlines, and authority representatives. The outcomes of this first workshop were included in the project deliverable on Challenges and Opportunities of Mobility Innovations for Airport Access.
The second MAIA workshop will be organised in Autumn 2024, with the aim of presenting the status of the newly developed tools (MAIA-ENGINE, MAIA-CCAM, and MAIA-UAM), validating their relevance, and discussing how they can be applied to cover the specification of the case studies.
The concept outline of the MAIA tools will be detailed, already built with the inclusion of multiple stakeholder perspectives, using a seed in a snowball sampling technique (meeting seed stakeholders to ask them if they miss additional stakeholders). The discussions with key stakeholders will lead to define plausible scenarios for the use of the tools, including the roles potentially assumed by each stakeholder, the updated list of high-level requirements, the description of required physical infrastructure for implementing the tool, and the description of the business model behind it.
In addition to engaging stakeholders in shaping the solutions developed in the project, MAIA partners spread the word on the work conducted to ensure its integration into common European research and innovation efforts. In this regard, several occasions were used to present the project objectives, status, and connect with the right audience.
A first opportunity was taken after just 6 months in the project, at the Tomorrow Mobility World Congress in Barcelona in November 2023. POLIS Network showcased there the key role of MAIA in supporting not only airport connectivity with urban centres, but also innovation development in terms of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) use case tests and implementation. In the heart of a crowded mobility innovators’ and smart cities’ community, this first public appearance supported the promotion of the MAIA first workshop and the connection with key players of the UAM emerging ecosystem.
A second opportunity was seized at the POLIS Conference at the end of November 2023 in Leuven, Belgium, to underline the relevance of the tools developed in the project within global transport network. A presentation by the MAIA coordinator, Nommon, highlighted the role of airports in TEN-T urban nodes and the necessity of a better multimodal integration, connecting both SESAR-funded projects MAIA and MultimodX. Attended by many local authorities from the POLIS Network and beyond, as well as transport operators from diverse modes, this session contributed to engage stakeholders on mobility innovations and integrated planning.
At the same moment, MAIA was also brought to the attention of a wide audience of air traffic management stakeholders and aviation research and innovation projects at the SESAR JU Innovation Days 2023 in Sevilla, Spain. Through a dedicated poster, the project methods, objectives and first results were exposed in a common area with related initiatives, supporting networking and key outcome exchanges.
Another opportunity seized by the project partners was the Autonomy Mobility World Expo in Paris in March 2024. In this occasion, the Val D’Oise Department in France exposed their innovation testbed around the Bourget airport, and how stakeholder collaboration supports UAM development in the Ile de France Region. Collaboration with the department led to the involvement of MAIA in another event in France at the end of March 2023, the Conference on Advance Aerial Mobility, focused on the future of aviation in the country. The representation of MAIA through a dedicated stand promoted innovative airport access solution development as well as key innovative use case for UAM services, and led to new contacts for the project, in particular with heliport operators.
Finally, the latest MAIA appearance on the public stage was at the Amsterdam Drone Week in April 2024, where POLIS organised a session on local authorities’ UAM strategy development, and promoted the project use case and external experts’ advisory board. Connections were made with the Paris Airport at this conference, as well as with the Province of North Holland introducing the innovation community around the Amsterdam Schiphol airport. Intense and fruitful three days to be followed with involvement to improve the MAIA outcomes in the close future, hopefully!
While active cooperation has been widely started and fruitful with other projects, the SESAR community, and stakeholders from diverse modes and parts of the transport system, as well as the aviation traditional stakeholders and innovation players, the MAIA project is always looking for more involvement. We are especially looking for network managers’ feedback on our tools, and airports’ collaboration on the scenarios we are defining. Finally, we need support from airlines on how to develop the best tools for a better service to their passengers.
As we journey into the heart of the MAIA project – “Multimodal Access for Intelligent Airports,” we are excited to share our recent milestones and achievements. MAIA is committed to revolutionizing the way we access and experience airports, and our progress speaks volumes about our dedication to this mission.
One of our early milestones was the successful submission of the Communication and Dissemination Strategy to the European Commission and the SESAR 3 Joint Undertaking. This strategy serves as the blueprint for how we will effectively communicate the objectives, progress, and results of the MAIA project to a diverse audience. By fostering transparency and accessibility, we aim to engage stakeholders, experts, and the public in shaping the future of intelligent airport access.
Another significant milestone we achieved was the development and submission of the Data Management Plan. This plan outlines our rigorous approach to collecting, storing, and sharing project data. By adhering to these guidelines, we ensure that our research remains transparent, accessible, and available for future innovation and collaboration.
These milestones mark just the beginning of our journey to unlock the potential of Connected and Autonomous Mobility (CCAM) and Urban Air Mobility (UAM) services within the airport access context. MAIA is committed to pushing the boundaries of innovation and creating sustainable, passenger-centric airport access solutions.
Stay connected with us as we continue to reach new milestones and pioneer the future of airport access. Visit our website for the latest updates and insights into our groundbreaking work. Join us in shaping the future of aviation and passenger mobility. Together, we can make airport access smarter, more efficient, and more sustainable.
Project Coordinator – Ines Peirats ines.peirats@nommon.es
Dissemination Manager – Manon Coyne mcoyne@polisnetwork.eu