As airlines struggle to balance their stated goals of reducing carbon emissions with carrying ever more passengers and raking in billions of dollars in profits, the air traffic control services that manage Europe's skies have repeatedly emerged as a predictable target of frustration.
Annoyance over years of strikes in Europe that upended peak-season schedules turned to rage this time last year when glitches in Britain's National Air Traffic Control Service (NATS) system grounded planes and forced airlines to pay the price for the disruption. Another simmering sore point for airlines is the perceived inefficiency of the system that governs European airspace based far below national borders.
The chief executive of Tui, the continent's largest travel company, told the BBC this week that he calculated that emissions could be reduced by 10% if there was “an effective organisation of flights over Europe”. Sebastian Ebell told BBC Radio 4 that “the decision needs to be made that there is one European sky”. Willie Walsh, chairman of aviation industry body IATA, has also argued that a single operator could cut CO2 emissions from flying by around 10% “almost overnight”.
A unified airspace would allow planes to fly a more direct route from takeoff to landing. But in reality, there's a patchwork of invisible sovereign airspace managed by operators in countless countries. “The United States, Canada and Australia are huge areas, but they only have one air traffic control authority. Europe has 43 authorities,” says Andrew Charlton, managing director of Aviation Advocacy, a Geneva-based consultancy.
“If the Wright brothers came flying today and decided to try to stop planes from crashing into each other, I don't think we would have invented this air traffic control system.”
A single airspace would allow planes to follow a more direct route from takeoff to landing. Photo: Philippe Hugen/AFP/Getty Images
The idea of a common airspace is as old as the EU itself, and only seemed to get off the ground 25 years ago when work began on legislation establishing the Single European Airspace (SES) concept in 2004. Eurocontrol, the agency set up in 1963 to help coordinate national air traffic management, was tasked with further integrating services.
The first step towards a single EU airspace would have been to create Functional Airspace Blocks (FABs), but “instead countries have organised themselves into traditional, historical blocs”, Charlton says.
These were mapped to ancient ties, not flight paths, and the British bloc only extended as far as Ireland. “We have different cultures, and that's what makes Europe so wonderful and interesting,” Charlton says, “but I don't see any reason why that has to happen at 32,000 feet.”
But nation states prioritize security, and are deeply attached to their sovereignty over military airspace. A second round of reforms has stumbled, stalled in part by a dispute between Britain and Spain over its applicability to Gibraltar airport.
After Brexit, the EU pushed for a revised SES 2+ deal to move towards closer integration, but the deal agreed in March this year was described by Mr Walsh as a “failed and unfair deal”.
Achim Baumann, policy director at aviation trade group A4E, took a more diplomatic view: “It's a small step towards real improvement. What we were hoping for in terms of clarity in the coordination between countries and the various actors is not there (yet).”
EasyJet chief executive Johan Lundgren says a unified airspace is “long overdue”. Photograph: Peter Cibola/Reuters
EasyJet chief executive Johan Lundgren said: “That's a long wait. We estimate we can save 10 to 15 percent of our total carbon emissions just on the easyJet network, because we're effectively not flying in a straight line, we're not flying at the right altitude. We just need to make changes.”
For airlines, the potential benefits are clear, but the reality is complicated. Air traffic controllers stress that airspace is critical national infrastructure and, like any such project, faces politics, local opposition and delays. Last month, for example, the UK Civil Aviation Authority announced the next phase of its own airspace modernization plan, which it began seven years ago. “Modernization needs to accelerate across Europe and the UK,” says Thomas Waldow, CEO of Heathrow Airport.
Airspace, or the systems that manage it and allow planes to fly, “is like a rail system, only it's in the air,” Waldhai said, “but it's just as important to aviation as rail infrastructure is to trains.”
But European airspace is not a high-speed railway in the sky, but rather a wobbly collection of branching tracks, managed by several different systems. The new aviation minister, Mike Cain, recently described the British system as “an analogue airspace for a digital age, designed closer to the time when Yuri Gagarin was reaching for the stars.”
Air traffic at London City Airport is remotely controlled from the Nationals Centre in Swanwick, Hampshire. Photo: Morten Watkins/Solent News & Photo Agency
Advances in technology could theoretically enable any country to remotely manage flights through another country's airspace – such as through virtual control towers at London City Airport – but few nations have achieved that level of trust.
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SES has shrunken borders somewhat; Eurocontrol announced a new frictionless airspace block linking the Benelux countries with northern Germany came into force last November. SES has “undoubtedly helped,” Waldwei says. “But we still have more than 10 percent of flights that don't take the optimal routes. There aren't enough resources on the ground and the airspace is organised around national borders rather than EU borders, so we continue to have congestion in areas that shouldn't be congested.”
Air traffic officials question whether multiple competing airlines really believe one service provider is best, even if it's technically possible.But the bigger issues are legal and political.
“Airlines would like France to manage UK airspace, but realistically that's not going to happen,” said Tanya Globotek, European director at Canso, an international group that represents air traffic control service providers. “In an ideal world, airlines would like to see themselves as the only customers of that airspace, but there are others.”
As cargo planes, private jets, drones and, potentially, flying taxis compete for airspace, military forces are the primary customers, and the invasion of Ukraine has exacerbated Europe's air traffic problems and doubled its sensitivity.
Flights around the continent and to Asia have been severely congested as they avoid Ukraine and Russia, and NATO's response to the growing threat from Moscow has included the biggest airspace closure since a volcanic eruption in Iceland grounded air travel in 2010.
A Ryanair plane parked at Stansted Airport after flights were cancelled due to a strike by French air traffic controllers. Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA
The politics of greater integration are complicated even without war. Salaries for controllers and the service providers who employ them vary widely across Europe, and the sector generates billions of dollars in fees annually. Last year, nationalists alone made £807 million from flying in British airspace. Some wonder whether AI might one day fragment the job, but for now air traffic controllers, especially in France, wield considerable industrial power.
A pre-Olympic agreement kept strikes in France to a minimum this year, but instead saw an increase in weather-related air traffic delays and waiting times up by almost 50 percent from last year due to congestion and capacity shortages in European airspace.
“We have the airspace, it's just allocated inefficiently,” an exasperated Mr Lundgren said, adding that the need for reform was “more clear than ever”.
Whether or not the promised SES materializes, air traffic service providers argue that technological improvements could bring many benefits, though they estimate the ultimate potential carbon reduction to be 6-7% rather than 10-15%. “The seamless airline flying experience across Europe can be achieved without there being a single provider or nation states giving up their sovereignty,” Globotec said.
But, she says, “It may be convenient for individual airlines to fly the shortest route, but capacity is not infinite. We need to figure out what's best for the whole system.”
