The objective of the INTENT project was to determine the influence of "information about the aircraft intended flight path", calculated by the aircraft’s Flight Management System (FMS) and sent out to other aircraft and the ground Air Traffic Management (ATM) system on mainly airspace capacity. The central research question of INTENT was defined as follows:

"How does the level of aircraft INTENT information, shared among ATM users and actors, relate to the air traffic system capacity, the avionics system design and ATM system design?"

The objective of INTENT was to answer this question, giving a technology roadmap and implementation plan for airborne and ground based equipment to increase airspace capacity. For that purpose, a relationship between aircraft intent information, the place of responsibility for the traffic separation assurance process (air, ground) and airspace capacity had to be found.