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The path to a deep understanding of how the forthcoming introduction of the SESAR trajectory based scenario will impact on the future air traffic management procedures goes through a better understanding of the actual air traffic system. To this end the WP-E ELSA project aims at developing an empirically grounded agent based model that describes some of the stylized facts observed in the Air Traffic Management of the European airspace. The model itself has two main parts, a Strategic layer and a Tactical layer, which aims at emulating the two main steps relevant in the ATM:(i) The strategic layer, focused on the interaction between the Network Manager and the Air Operators and (ii) the tactical layer, focused on aircraft and controllers behaviour in Air Traffic Control (ATC) sectors. The preliminary results for the strategic layer show that when we have a mixing of re-routing and shifting companies, the overall satisfaction can even increase together with the number of flights, which is an effect not observed when one have in the system one type of companies only. The preliminary results for the tactical layer indicate that when shocks in the system are confined in small areas, the interplay between the re-routing and change of flight level strategies may even lead to trajectory modifications that give smaller average delays as long as the number of shocks increases.