How Integrated Voice Will Transform ATC

Airport Industry News
Frequentis AG
28 October 2025

Voice is the final silo in air traffic management (ATM). Airport Industry-News talks to Frequentis Executive Vice President ATM, Reinhard Grimm, about how to unlock its full potential, and break down the final barrier.

Airport Industry-News: Reinhard, in recent years, we’ve seen huge advances in automation within air traffic management. Where does voice communication fit into that picture today?
Reinhard Grimm: Voice is still a fundamental tool for controllers, and, although we’ve seen a lot of integration in other parts of ATM, voice was isolated by design in order to act as a fall-back controllers could always rely on. So, core functions like surveillance, flight data processing, conflict resolution and monitoring are now tightly connected but the voice communication system (VCS), what controllers use to speak to pilots and other controllers, still largely operates on its own. But if we integrate voice with automation, we can unlock major gains in efficiency, safety and capacity...

How Integrated Voice Will Transform ATC | Airport Industry-News| 28 Oct 2025