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Safety and Operations
Create a truly Single Sky for Europe
EU governments have agreed that, by 2012, European airspace should be organised in functional blocks which are determined not by national boundaries but by traffic flows. They also agreed that performance targets for Air Traffic Management (ATM) should be set and monitored not by the navigation service providers, but by an independent regulator. In addition, a public-private-partnership programme called SESAR was established to develop the technology which will replace the current patchwork of systems currently in use. But implementing SESAR cannot be financed by airlines alone.
These fundamental changes will make ATM better, more efficient, and cheaper, whilst maintaining extremely high levels of safety. Passengers will no longer suffer the levels of delay currently experienced and the elimination of circuitous routings, inefficient flight profiles and holding patterns could reduce European airlines’ carbon footprint by as much as 12%
IAEA calls upon the Member States and the EU Commission to ensure that 1) the concept of a Single European Sky is made a reality – if needs be in incremental steps which deliver measurable benefits for all, and 2) public investment is available for the implementation of SESAR