True North: Rethinking one of aviation’s oldest assumptions

For more than a century, aviation has relied on Magnetic North as its operational reference. Yet as air traffic management evolves towards a digitally connected, highly automated, trajectory-based future, an important question has emerged: Is Magnetic North still the right foundation for future skies?

Imagine it is 2045.

A pilot is guiding an aircraft through a sky shared with autonomous drones, advanced air taxis, commercial spacecraft and increasingly automated air traffic systems. Around that aircraft, computers are exchanging vast amounts of data in real time, calculating trajectories, predicting conflicts and optimising routes with extraordinary precision.

Now ask yourself, what is the one thing all of those systems need to agree on?

Direction.

And yet, much of aviation still relies on a directional reference that is constantly moving and has discrepancies from platform to platform, air to ground and air to airport.

That simple observation sparked a conversation within the CATS Global Council. What began as a technical discussion about magnetic variation evolved into something much bigger: a question about the very foundations of the future aviation system.

The result is the CATS Think Paper, True North: A Necessary Evolution for Future Skies?

This paper is not an argument about runway numbers. It is a story about transformation to enable the future.

For decades, airports, aircraft, ANSPs and governments have invested significant time, effort and resources adapting procedures, charts, navigation databases, runways and systems to keep pace with a magnetic pole that never stops moving. That approach has served aviation well. But as our industry becomes increasingly digital, interconnected and automated, the question that naturally arises is:

Should future aviation continue expending resources to chase a moving target?

The Think Paper explores how a stable geodetic reference, True North, could support the next generation of air traffic management. It draws on operational experience from regions already using True North, examines safety and efficiency considerations, and considers how a common global reference could help enable the future operational concepts envisioned by the CATS community.

This is no longer a purely theoretical discussion.

Recognising that every State and ANSP will have a different starting point, the CATS initiative has developed a complementary assessment tool that allows organisations to explore the potential impacts within their own environment. Instead of debating possibilities, stakeholders can begin examining evidence, assessing runway, navigation aid and operational implications using a structured approach.

Whether you are an ANSP executive, regulator, airport operator, pilot, procedure designer, avionics specialist or simply someone interested in the future of aviation, this Think Paper invites you into the conversation.

Because every major transformation begins with a simple question and the curiosity to explore what is possible.

Not how we have always done something.

But whether the way we do it today is the way we should do it tomorrow.

So, as aviation continues to design the future sky, we invite the CATS Global Vision community to read the Think Paper and consider a deceptively simple question:

When future aviation looks north, which north should it follow?

Download the Think Paper here.