Europe Aims to Unify Its Air Traffic System

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The New York Times
Thursday, October 11, 2012

Europe Aims to Unify Its Air Traffic System

By NICOLA CLARK

BRUSSELS — It has been more than two years since the ash plume from an Icelandic volcano paralyzed European skies and galvanized support for a unified system of air traffic management.

But political momentum for an overhaul has stalled even though Europe’s patchwork of air traffic control fiefs is so notoriously inefficient that even on clear days airlines and travelers waste time and money on too few flights, too many delays and too many illogical, circuitous flight paths.

Hoping to renew the sense of urgency, the European Union’s transport commissioner plans to turn up the heat. He intends on Thursday to threaten legal action against member governments that do not soon take serious steps toward integrating their air traffic control operations.

The long-term goal is a complete rethinking and streamlining of a half-century-old system that is now fragmented across 27 members of the European Union and an additional 12 nearby countries.

“We remain a long way from creating a single European airspace,” the commissioner, Siim Kallas, said in prepared remarks that he plans to deliver Thursday at a conference of regulators, air traffic management bodies and airline executives in Limassol, Cyprus. “There are some signs of change, but overall progress is too slow, and too limited. We need to think of other solutions and apply them quickly.”

Quickly, in this case, means meeting an initial Dec. 4 deadline that the E.U. has set. By that time, all European Union members are expected to complete agreements to merge their various national airspaces into nine “functional airspace blocs.” And by early next year, the countries will be obliged to demonstrate clear progress on reducing costs in the control system and increasing air traffic.

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