Eurocontrol

EUROCONTROL is the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation. This civil and military Organization which currently numbers 34 Member States, has as its primary objective the development of a seamless, pan-European Air Traffic Management (ATM) system. The achievement of this objective is a key element to the present and future challenges facing the aviation community, which are to cope with the forecast growth in the air traffic, while maintaining a high level of safety, reducing costs, and respecting the environment.

EUROCONTROL develops, coordinates and plans for implication of short-, medium-, and long-term pan-European air traffic management strategies and their associated action in a collective effort involving national authorities, air navigation service providers, civil and military airspace users, airports industry, professional organizations and relevant European institutions.

EUROCONTROL’s core activities span entire range of gate-to-gate air navigation service operations – from strategic and tactical flow management to controller training; from regional control of airspace to development of leading-edge, safety-proofed technologies and procedures, and the collection of air navigation changes.

The idea of a single sky for Europe is one of long-standing. Indeed, EUROCONTROL was created in 1960 for the express purpose of creating a single upper airspace by its six founding member states. This purpose was only partially fulfilled at the time – but the idea remained a tenacious one.

The growth of traffic is yet to continue. EUROCONTROL expects that today’s traffic will have doubled by 2020. Current systems, with ongoing improvements, should be able to handle this increased load until the middle of the next decade. After that, more radical measures are called for in order to avoid serious congestion.

The Single European Sky (SES) initiative is confidently expected to lay the foundations of a unified system which will be able to cater for the anticipated growth.

A Single Market, A Single Currency, A Single Sky? Europe eliminated frontiers on the ground with the 1985 single European market. It dismantled economic frontiers with the 1990 economic and monetary union. It is a view widely held that borders in the sky should not exist.

In spite of much effort to modernize and streamline it, Europe’s air traffic management system remains safe but fair costly. It is also hampered by heterogeneous working practices and constrained by air route networks which, in the main, are based on national borders and not air traffic flows.

The Single European Sky initiative puts forward a legislative approach to solving the issues that currently affect air transport as well as enabling ATM to cope with future demands.

The Single European Sky launched by the European Commission was drafted with the following objectives:

- to restructure European airspace as a function of air traffic flows, rather than according to national borders;

- to create additional capacity; and

- to increase the overall efficiency of the traffic management system.

The European Commission’s ATM legislative package of four regulations covers the essential regulatory elements to be developed in order to achieve a seamless European Air Traffic Management System. They are:

1. A Framework for the Creation of the Single Sky.

2. The Provision of Air Navigation Services.

3. The Organization and Use of Airspace.

4. The Interoperability of the European Air Traffic Management Network.

EUROCONTROL has considerable expertise and experience which will be applied to help make the Single European Sky become reality.