Value Proposition - could you present this to us and also include the back story - where did the original idea come from? How has it changed over time? What is the problem the platform solves and how have you validated this?

The original idea in 2019-2020 was to introduce new technologies in ATM, including cloud infrastructure for operations, rich web interfaces, a platform capable of covering different aviation verticals, and massive data processing to support future AI applications.

The platform's goal was to deploy applications at a reduced cost while still obtaining approvals from regulators for live operations. The initial use cases were ambitious: flow control applications with massive data computation and AI predictions, and enroute contingency using satellite data.

The initial vision did not fundamentally change, but several use cases have been defined to target market niches where new technologies could be explored and grown from there (disruptive niche growth):
1. FID (flight information displays) for AFIS (airport flight information service) in small airports → Romeo5 AIR;
2. Ground situational awareness in medium airports → Romeo5 Ground;
3. Airspace complexity and cloud data replay → Bravo5;
4. Airport dashboards for safety & performance → Delta5.

The intention behind these new use cases was to find applications with shorter sales cycles to facilitate quicker sales and enter some initial customers, enabling larger sales that require longer cycles and more slow decision making.

Pipeline - any and all conversations you have had and/or are having with any potential clients

We targeted the top 25 UK airports, pitching R5 AIR.

Currently open: Manchester Barton; RCA (Bournemouth Airport, Exeter Airport, and Norwich Airport); Land’s End for R5 Air and Leeds & Liverpool for R5 GND.
We have pitch B5 to several ANSPs, current following up with HungaroControl, BULATSA, BANSA.

Sales cycles for all current clients, deal structure (current and normal)

For airports in the UK → direct or CFT.
For ANSPs (AustroControl) → direct, as it is under the limit per year for now.
Setup fee + monthly subscriptions, long-term contracts: HIAL: 10-15 years license; Gloucester: 3 years; AustroControl: 4 years.

Competition and competitive landscape - Passur?

1 ATC/AFIS Flight Information Displays for airports:
- large & medium → Indra, Thales, HON, ADB, SAAB; Searidge; Adacel
- small → uAvionix, ANSART, SkySoft-ATM, DFS Phoenix, in-house solutions (Avinor AFIS).
2 Replay, safety post ops: Data recorders - ASMT; Video → Jotron, Eventide, SkyREC (data and video) but very limited data processing tools.
3 Airport dashboarding & performance: Aerofficial.

Other use cases:
Planning and operations: Passur; custom solutions.
ATC Contingency systems: Frequentis PRISMA.
Flow management: Thales, Indra.

Loss analysis - why haven't bids been won?

R5 AIR has been presented to several UK airports that did not have the budget available.
R5 GND has only been presented to Leeds and Liverpool.
B5 only recently supported radar data (vs ADS-B), which was a must for several ANSPs.
D5 has been presented only to potential integrators with other solutions (GECI, Aireon) rather than final customers.

In general, sales efforts have been very limited, due to budget constraints.

How much more grant money is available?

As of today, DataBeacon has submitted four grant proposals for a total of 2.35M€ (our budget in those proposals) pending resolution:
- DynaGate → Romeo5 UTM for Critical Infrastructure protection, 1M€, awarded in November 2025; 4 years.
- HARMONY → Bravo5 with HungaroControl and AustroControl, 600k€; awarded March 2026; 2.5 years.
- AFIS-NET → Romeo5 with Manchester Barton / ENAV, 600k€; awarded March 2026; 2.5 years.
- Delta5 → 150K€, grant requested to the Madrid regional government to support the past development of D5; awarded before end 2025.

Future opportunities for DataBeacon:
- SESAR (EU) – Joint Undertaking under Horizon Europe with a total envelope of about €1.6 billion for 2021-2030. Annual work programmes release calls roughly once a year, typically each spring, covering Digital European Sky, Industrial Research, and Exploratory Research.

- CDTI – Spain – National agency (Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico e Industrial) funding aeronautical and space R&D. Continues to issue annual Aeronautical Technology Plan and other aerospace calls, open to Spanish entities or international consortia with a Spanish partner.

- UK – Innovate UK and UKRI competitions (e.g., Future Flight, sustainable aviation), UK AMS support fund.

When does the new EASA regulation come in?

No formal date has been announced, but based on current EASA working-group progress, a reasonable expectation is during 2026.

EASA SMAS (Surface Movement & Awareness Services). We are part of the initial requirements-definition group shaping the regulation itself. Romeo5 GND is effectively pre-aligned with the coming standard.

Is the US policy change for Gnd Surv already in place? Who is doing this now. won't big provides (Indra etc) leap at this?

FAA Order JO 7110.665 “Surface Awareness Initiative Display (SAID)” is active (issued May 30, 2024; effective June 30, 2024).

This formalizes controller use of SAI displays for surface situational awareness. SAI sits inside the FAA’s Surface Safety Portfolio, which describes scope, intent, and rollout. FAA launched Request for Qualification in 2024 and has pre-qualified Indra, SAAB, and uAvionix. Further qualification requests (RFQ) are expected to scale the program to +250 airports.

44 airports have been assigned in competitive CFTs. uAvionix — multiple SAI airports live; 14 reported by July 30, 2025. Saab (Aerobahn Runway & Surface Safety) — Initial 4 plus selected by FAA for 26 additional in 2025..Indra (AeroBOSS) — 4 initial airports.

Airports

HIAL contracted through other company - is there a way this could be direct?

The HIAL deployment was routed through ANSL as a prime contractor. Direct contracting is feasible – There is no technical or regulatory barrier to a direct agreement with HIAL → except for the insurance coverage, out of reach for us. Probably also references.

Partnering with ANSL created unnecessary interference and slowed the contract, communication, and questionable added value.

Subsequent contracts—Gloucestershire, and the offers to Leeds and Liverpool—were sent directly with the airport.

Explain the PoCs with Leeds/Liverpool

We offered R5 GND to Leeds that starts with a POC (as no regulation is in place), which can trigger the regulation conversation with CAA.
Pricing for Leeds: Terms of the POC: Each Party agrees to bear its own costs and expenses; offer to Leeds was £220,000;
Similar terms will be offer to Liverpool (KOM scheduled 2025.09.23).

Any customer feedback?

Overall – Extremely positive; users consistently remark on the professional, polished look of the interfaces. Best in the market.

B5 – Feedback gathered from Austro Control during project collaborations highlighted strong value; suggested features were iterated quickly.

R5 AIR/GND – Airports and proposal partners have expressed great satisfaction with performance and usability. Client-driven improvements – The platform has incorporated every client request that was deemed useful, making the solution ideal in current deployments.

Overall design – All products were designed by active ATCOs or prospective end-users, which users recognise as a key strength. Dual cloud/onprem is a great advantage during deployment and will be a great asset in future cloud-main systems.

Infrastructure requirements

Very optimized and very cost effective at this point:

For R5, local ADS-B receiver, from 1K€ cost; Local computing infrastructure, redundant NUCs; Network switch, NTP, other networking. Most of the infrastructure complexities so far are around VPN connectivities.

For B5, radar data uploaded to our cloud domain and no user local setup needed.

ICP/who are you selling to?

Bravo5 → The ideal customer for Bravo5 is one of the approximately 200 global Air Navigation Service Providers seeking enhanced post-operational safety replay and recording capabilities to better understand and optimize their airspace. These mid-to-large organizations, often government-affiliated or hybrid entities, manage moderate to high-traffic airspaces in any region. They face key challenges such as inefficient incident analysis, regulatory compliance pressures from ICAO standards, and scalability issues amid growing demands from drones and urban air mobility. Our goal was to target ANSPs in emerging markets or with agile procurement processes helps avoid lengthy cycles, focusing on those with recent tech investments and a data-driven approach to safety.

Decision-makers include safety managers or operations leads who value quick-deployment tools for immediate ROI, such as reducing investigation times. These innovative, risk-averse buyers engage through industry events and prefer pilot programs for entry-level features, with strong upsell potential to advanced integrations like ops room analytics.

Romeo5 Air → The ideal customer for Romeo5 is a small or mid-sized airport operator, including civil airfields and military bases without radar surveillance. These are typically low-traffic facilities but in the higher end (100 daily operations) in any region, with operating budgets of $100K-$5M annually. Key decision-makers face pain points like safety risks from inadequate flight tracking, high costs of traditional systems, and regulatory compliance pressures (e.g., ADS-B mandates). Romeo5 appeals to them as a lightweight, affordable solution combining hardware with SaaS for real-time displays and network coverage with recording and accident investigation capabilities.

Romeo5 Ground → The ideal customer for Romeo5 Ground is a medium-sized airport operator in the commercial aviation sector, particularly those handling 200K+ IFR operations annually under EC regulations, which mandate separated ground services. These airports typically provide full ATC for airborne traffic via radar but lack dedicated surface radar for complex platform and ground operations, often relying on manual methods during Low Visibility Procedures (LVPs). They face pain points such as safety risks, delays, and compliance gaps in busy aprons or taxiways. Key decision-makers include ATC managers and operations directors who prioritize regulatory adherence and operational efficiency.

Romeo5 Ground appeals to these customers as an affordable situational display solution that enhances real-time ground tracking without the high costs of surface radar infrastructure, integrating seamlessly with existing airborne systems. It fits a hybrid SaaS model with hardware bundles and network coverage, offering scalability for LVPs and accident prevention.

Delta5 → The ideal customer for Delta5 is a mid-to-large airport operator in the commercial and regional aviation sector, handling 200K-5M+ annual operations with complex air and ground traffic. These airport have existing ATC infrastructure but struggle with transforming raw surveillance data into actionable insights for performance monitoring, safety, and efficiency. They face pain points such as high costs of active systems, interference in data collection, and compliance pressures requiring holistic tracking of aircraft and ground vehicles.

Regulators

Why haven't more jumped on your capability?

We have not targeted regulators at this point.

ICP/who are you selling to?

We have not targeted regulators at this point.

Any insurance conversations? Any military conversations?

No insurance, no military/defence.

What are the key barriers to adoption (safety certification, unions, trust, cybersecurity)?

Romeo5 Air → small airports budget and CAA approvals times.
Romeo5 GND → EASA/CAA regulation; non-equipped (ADS-B) vehicles.
Bravo5 → Uploading radar data to our facilities (although we have an onprem version for B5 now).

How sensitive is demand to regulatory changes or incidents involving AI in aviation?

Very slow adoption of AI in ATM, regardless the many initiatives, projects under EASA/SESAR.

Regulatory stance – EASA and FAA limit AI use to non-safety-critical tasks (e.g., analytics, planning, performance dashboards). No approvals for tactical separation or safety nets.

Some opportunities in non-safety critical scenarios will open, including planning, turnaround management, flow management, airspace capacity planning.

How concentrated is customer demand (e.g., a few national ANSPs controlling most adoption)?

Bravo5 → Yes, customers are +200 ANSPs in the world. Highly concentrated: purchases controlled by national or regional ANSPs (e.g., NATS, DFS, ENAV), creating a few large buyers, one per country.

Romeo5 Air/Ground or Delta5→ It varies, but often independent commercial private or public entities. Buying decisions made at airport or regional-group level, so demand is fragmented, especially for small/medium fields. In some countries, airports are operated by a single entity (e.g., in Spain, Aena controls/operates +40 airports).

What are the switching costs for customers (training, integration, regulatory approval)?

Adoption Costs (Switching to Romeo5): For airports without an existing surveillance system, the barriers to adopting Romeo5 are minimal, making it a straightforward and cost-effective entry point into enhanced situational awareness. Integration is very low-effort, as the system operates standalone and requires only minimal configuration. Its flexible display options—ranging from full tower screens to compact iPad interfaces—further simplify deployment, enabling use by pilots or ground vehicles (e.g., "Follow-me" operations) without extensive hardware changes. Training is efficient, thanks to an intuitive interface that allows users to achieve basic proficiency through a quick review of the user manual. Regulatory approval represents the primary potential challenge, with timelines varying by CAA inspectors; however, some customers engage third-party firms to streamline paperwork. Overall, the financial and operational transition costs are extremely low compared to traditional ATC or AFIS system implementations, facilitating rapid adoption and quick value realization.

Switching Costs (Switching Away from Romeo5): Once Romeo5 is implemented, the costs of switching to an alternative provider are significantly higher, creating strong customer retention and reducing churn risk. Re-integration would involve reconfiguring the CWPs, potentially disrupting operations and requiring custom adaptations that Romeo5's flexible, standalone design avoids. Retraining staff on a new system could face internal resistance, as users become accustomed to Romeo5's UI and efficient workflows, leading to productivity dips and opposition from teams who value the reduced workload and improved situational awareness. Regulatory re-approval adds further complexity, as airports must navigate CAA processes anew for the replacement system, incurring delays and additional compliance costs. In aggregate, these factors result in high switching costs—both tangible (e.g., time, fees) and intangible (e.g., operational friction)—ensuring that customers remain committed to Romeo5.