Discover... ISAE-SUPAERO’s experimental bench!

With a fleet of 9 light aircraft, the COAL offers a unique learning experience, focusing on three main activities:

• Training for the private pilot’s licence (PPL): our engineering and masters students train to obtain their pilot’s licence, allowing them to fly a single-engine aircraft.

• Practical teaching work: from flight mechanics to flight tests, these sessions enable students to apply theoretical lessons in real-life conditions.

• Human factors research: our work focuses on the cognitive and decision-making aspects in real time of the pilot in flight, a key area for safety and innovation in aeronautics.

At ISAE-SUPAERO, engineering and Master’s students have the chance to take their pilot’s license just a few kilometers from campus. Several instructors accompany them and train them in piloting.
All are members of the Aerospace Vehicle Design and Operation Research Department, headed by Valérie Budinger.

To strengthen the links between industry and research, more than 10 industrial R&D engineers have been made available to ISAE-SUPAERO as part of the France Relance plan!
Cyril Geneste, a research engineer at Latécoère, is one of them. Together with Miguel Charlotte, associate professor at the Institute, he looks back on this fruitful two-year collaboration.
Their work, carried out in the ISAE-SUPAERO laboratories, focused on the behaviour of aircraft door seals, which ensure cabin watertightness. Thanks to the Institute’s cutting-edge equipment and academic expertise, Cyril Geneste was able in particular to carry out numerical modelling of seals in order to test their behaviour. Students in their 3rdᵉ year of engineering studies were also involved in this work.

The AeroMAPS tool, developed by two ISAE-SUPAERO researchers, Scott Delbecq and Thomas Planès, can be used to assess the environmental impact of air transport and the effectiveness or limitations of levers for decarbonizing the sector.
Initially designed for research and training purposes, it now serves as a multidisciplinary platform for experts and decision-makers from institutions, industry, and associations. Its development has been integrated into the work of the Institute for Sustainable Aviation (ISA), a collaborative research institute initiated by Laurent joly, head of research for sustainable aviation, which aims to address the transition to #lowcarbon #aviation in all its complexity.
By playing on the sector’s transition levers, AeroMAPS users can define the scenarios whose impacts they wish to analyze. For example, the introduction of new aircraft types, the use of new fuels or the rate of growth in air traffic.
AeroMAPS is the first air transport scenario simulation platform built on an open-source scientific methodology. It was initially designed and developed to enable researchers to explore air transport transition scenarios in detail. It was soon integrated into training programs: first as part of the ISAE-SUPAERO engineering curriculum, then as part of continuing education programs.
To see the bigger picture, the two researchers added a socio-economic dimension to their tool (via a thesis conducted by Antoine Salgas, a doctoral student on the project, in partnership with Toulouse Business School), and subsequently, a traffic and emissions inventory, enabling the analyses made with AeroMAPS to be partitioned and regionalized: the AeroSCOPE tool, created as part of a collaboration with the Dutch university TU Delft.
Today, AeroMAPS’ comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach is a decision-making aid for the entire aeronautics ecosystem, as well as for institutional, industrial and association decision-makers. Through its scientific expertise, ISAE-SUPAERO contributes to the public debate on the place of aviation in our society!