Will a single European airspace cure air traffic control woes – and cut CO2?

For airlines struggling to reconcile their stated aims of cutting carbon emissions and making billions from flying ever more passengers, one target has emerged repeatedly for their projected frustration: the air traffic control services that manage Europe’s skies. Irritation through years of strikes in Europe that upended peak season schedules turned to rage this time last year when a glitch in the UK’s National Air Traffic Services (Nats) system grounded planes, leaving airlines to pick up the tab for the disruption. Another festering sore for airlines is the supposed inefficiency of a system that runs European airspace based on the borders far below. The CE of the continent’s biggest travel company, Tui, told the BBC this week that the company had calculated it could avoid 10% of emissions if there was an “effective flight organisation over Europe”. Sebastian Ebel told BBC Radio 4: “A decision is needed that there is one European sky”. Willie Walsh, the boss of the airlines body Iata, has also claimed that a single operator could reduce CO2 from flying by about 10% “almost overnight”. One unified airspace would allow planes to fly straighter routes from takeoff to landing; instead, there is an invisible patchwork of sovereign skies under the control of myriad national operators. “The US, Canada, and Australia are enormous areas with one air traffic control agency. In Europe, you’ve got 43,” says Andrew Charlton, the managing director of Aviation Advocacy, a Geneva-based consultancy. “If the Wright brothers walked in today with aircraft, and we decided that we didn’t want them to bang into each other, I don’t think you would have invented an air traffic control system that looks like this.”<br/>