Dr. Johanna Tzanidaki, ERTICO’s Director of Innovation and Deployment, had the pleasure to introduce the concept of Mobility as a Service and ERTICO’s Urban Mobility strategy to ACARE’s (Advisory Council for Aviation Research and Innovation in Europe) Mobility Working Group on 20 March 2019. The aim was to create synergies and to consider new ways that the aviation sector could be integrated into this new concept of urban mobility that is currently on everyone’s lips.
At the Working Group meeting, Dr. Tzanidaki provided a clearer definition of MaaS, which given its transversal fields of application, sets a framework for truly multimodal and seamless mobility solutions and pointed out how the aviation sector could be linked to other mobility sectors, going beyond the optimisation of airport access and the acceleration and improvement of airport and ATM processes. In particular, Dr. Tzanidaki explained how MaaS can integrate air mobility to ground transport system with an increased predictability of operations that might remove the primary causes of journey disruptions, and as a result help creating hassle-free door-to-door journeys not only in cities, but also for long-distance travellers.
“MaaS can indeed improve the door-to-door journey planning of travellers including to and from the airport,” she said “and it is a pleasure to see ACARE’s working group members express such a strong interest in MaaS and ERTICO’s activities when it comes to seamless, urban and multimodal services”.
ACARE and ERTICO both expressed their interest in a future collaboration and in the alignment of activities, as well as continuing the discussion on how MaaS and urban mobility solutions can be better integrated to air transport, improving the travel experience for users around Europe and the world.
