Report Contends Continued Fragmentation Costs Billions Annually

A group developed by the European Commission issued a report Friday urging the European Union to create a unified airspace over Europe.

The High Level Group was developed by the EC as an advisory body to help strengthen Europe's aviation system. The group concludes a unified European airspace will cut travel costs, increase safety and improve air traffic's environmental efficiency, according to the Associated Press.

"At present, performance is impeded by fragmentation across borders and across component parts of the aviation system," states a document serving to speed up the Single European Sky plan.

The Single European Sky concept was introduced in 2004 to eliminate the need for aircraft to stumble through 27 separate national air spaces utilizing a single, integrated air traffic control system, according to the AP.

Jacqueline Tammenons Bakker is the chairwoman of the High Level Group. She says continuing such fragmentation places an annual and unnecessary $4.4 billion burden on  carriers and, in turn, their passengers and contributes to an increase in air pollution.

"The objective of the Single European Sky is for planes flying from A to B get there in the most efficient way," she said. "Why has it not progressed as much as necessary? It's because air traffic navigation is still very much a national issue and what we propose to do in our recommendations is to give the commission advice on how it can break through that constraint."

The report gave 10 recommendations including giving greater power to Eurocontrol, Europe's air navigation agency; and remodeling the European Aviation Safety Agency after the US Federal Aviation Administration.

The Association of European Airlines and the International Air Transport Association applauded the report.

"There can be no more excuses (in implementing the single sky plan). It's time to start moving," said Giovanni Bisignani, IATAs director general.

"Our belief is that by having new economic regulation that encourages individual air navigation service providers to work together to reduce costs, that would help," Tammenons Bakker said. "We also see no reasons why sovereignty considerations which should impede cross border cooperation between air traffic management organizations."

FMI: www.eurocontrol.be, www.aea.be, www.iata.org, www.europa.eu