Taking Advantage of the Air Transport Crisis to Reform ATC in Europe

zby Marc Baumgartner, IFATCA SESAR/EASA Coordinator, with Pierre Andribet and Jean-Marc Garot, both Former DIRECTORS of the EUROCONTROL Experimental Centre

While Air Traffic Control (ATC) in Europe fulfils its role overall from a safety standpoint, it is suffering structural inefficiencies that have become unbearable with the current COVID-19 crisis. An ambitious vision needs to be developed by the European decision makers at the state and pan-European level (including the European Union).

Using the current crisis as a starting point, we could significantly improve the efficiency of ATC in Europe – both in operational and financial terms in the interest of the airspace users and passengers. Users and staff of this industry would support such an effort.

Air traffic is unlikely to recover in the coming months, and the Air Navigation Services Providers (ANSPs) providing air navigation services in Europe are facing a “financing wall.” With fixed costs and less traffic, either the European states subsidise the ANSPs, or the user charges per flight will need to increase significantly. Such increases undoubtedly would trigger strong reactions from airlines already severely hit by the crisis. While recognising the value of the recent EC legislative proposal, the authors of this article propose a more ambitious approach, based upon the Wise Persons Group Report: a transition towards a pan-European ATC, including reinventing EUROCONTROL.

The idea is to address fragmentation from the operational and technical standpoints. For the latter, if nothing else is accomplished, Europe could at least choose common procurement with preferred, “standardised” technology for communication, navigation and surveillance (CNS) infrastructure and common development/procurement of air traffic management (ATM) systems.

Photo: Shutterstock of the Functional Airspace Blocks (FAB). This could foster the harmonisation – even more – the modernisation of operational procedures, which are all out of date. A more ambitious option could be a single service provider for Europe, reinventing the vision of the founders of EUROCONTROL.

The primary reason for the aforementioned structural weaknesses is the fragmentation of the air traffic system in Europe. For more than 50 years, this fragmentation has been recognised as a problem. That was the main rationale for the creation of EUROCONTROL and for the initiatives of the European Commission (EC) in this area. However, because international law (ICAO, International Civil Aviation Organisation) recognizes that every European state retains complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above their territory, previous initiatives to unify these systems have not succeeded. As such, the history of EUROCONTROL is an example of the ups and downs of European integration.

As underlined by the European Court of Auditors, the legislative attempt of the European Commission to reform ATC in Europe, with the successive packages of the Single European Sky (SES) has resulted in incremental improvements in the performance and modernisation of the European Air Traffic Management (ATM) system. But it has not generated the expected paradigm change and has not sufficiently reduced its fragmentation. The resulting gridlock is detrimental to European air transport. z Photo: Eurocontrol offices in Brussels

A more ambitious option would be for Europe to consider CNS infrastructure as a service and no longer as an investment. This would allow the total virtualisation of ATM systems. With an “infrastructure manager” using EU funds, spending a fraction of the money spent in the SES technology pillar, SESAR, and deployment, this could be the second real European-wide infrastructure after the Galileo Project. Centrally funded, it would remove significant financial risk from the operational units, unbundling operational and financial systems.

In regards to reducing operational fragmentation, as far as airspace management is concerned, Europe could implement a top-down design to group air traffic control centres (ACC), independent from national borders. This idea was the initial objective With either option, taking the existing delegation of control in Maastricht, Zurich and Geneva as examples, it could easily be argued that this does not jeopardise the European states’ sovereignty or air defences.

With both options, with a stronger political decision maker, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) will retain its role as safety manager, but there needs to be a more powerful network manager.

A single service provider for Europe – paid by European funds – would provide for robust financing and relieve the European states from subsidising their ANSPs. Also, user charges would no longer need to pay the costs for these services. Nevertheless, they could continue to be collected by the Central Route Charges Office (CRCO) of EUROCONTROL.

Interested in reading more? You may find a longer, more detailed version of this article here .y