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Message from Victor M. Aguado, Director General EUROCONTROL |
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September 2007: Director General's Update |
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This year’s summer traffic figures saw an increase of 5.6% between June and August compared with 2006 while at the same time flow management delays were contained at 2.1 minutes per flight. Nevertheless, at a time when traffic growth is exceeding the forecast in some areas of Europe, it is essential for the aviation industry to continue driving improvements in ATM performance in order to ensure that there is sufficient capacity to meet demand in the future. Concerted action is essential in order to ensure that flow management delays are maintained at an acceptable level.
In this context I should like to highlight three important events, all of which took place at the beginning of July.
The High-Level Group for the Future Aviation Regulatory Framework delivered a report to Jacques Barrot, Vice-President of the European Commission (EC), entitled “A Framework for Driving Performance Improvement”. The report focuses on successful delivery of the Single European Sky (SES) and addresses the key role of EUROCONTROL in this regard.
ATM R&D is an essential activity that provides the basis for future performance improvements and the 7th edition of the USA/Europe joint seminar on ATM R&D provided an opportunity to review research priorities and foster close coordination on R&D at the global level.
The new, integrated Operations Room of the Central Flow Management Unit (CFMU) was inaugurated. Through a network approach this pan-European function delivers a major contribution to the current good performance of ATM in Europe.
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Updates on the different areas of our activity can be accessed on the September edition of the EUROCONTROL brief |
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June 2007: Director General's Update |
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Improving overall ATM performance is the main driving force for the ATM industry as a whole and EUROCONTROL, together with its stakeholders, continues to focus its efforts towards achieving this goal. In 2006 traffic increased by 4.1% over 2005 while the average air traffic flow Management delay per flight was maintained at the same level(1.9 minutes).
There is however no room for complacency. A concerted effort at the pan-European level is required to continue to enhance network capacity in order to meet the demand for air transport, which is anticipated to grow by 29% between 2006 and 2012. Improving cost efficiency remains a key focus for EUROCONTROL and we believe that pan-European
programmes will produce cost savings of more than 970 million Euros per annum from 2015 onwards.
In driving performance, we also need to look beyond Europe and in March more than 350 representatives of the aviation industry from all around the world attended the Global ICAO Symposium on Air Navigation Performance. During this event it was underlined that the experience gained in Europe in systematic performance measurement and review could usefully be developed on a global scale.
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Updates on the different areas of our activity can be accessed on the June edition of the EUROCONTROL brief |
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November 2006: Director General's Update |
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The summer is rarely a quiet time for air transport in Europe, and this year was no exception. With traffic hitting all-time highs, and five individual days in June and July seeing more than 31,000 aircraft, the challenges for air traffic control have seldom been greater. At the same time, events such as the war in Lebanon, the security incident in London in August, and the football World Cup strengthened even further the need for pan-European coordination and impartial oversight of the European system.
EUROCONTROL’s Central Flow Management Unit played a key role in coordinating events over the summer. Working closely with the German authorities and the airline companies, the CFMU helped to ensure that though traffic in Germany rose by 3% during the period, there were very few World Cup-related air traffic flow management delays in any part of the network.
When conflict broke out in Lebanon, EUROCONTROL was able to restrict traffic entering Lebanese airspace and, in coordination with Cyprus, introduced temporary departure procedures for flights from Tel Aviv. EUROCONTROL also assisted Middle East Airlines (MEA), the Lebanese flag carrier whose operations were severely affected, so that it could operate from Damascus.
During the security alert of 10 August in London, EUROCONTROL again worked closely with the national authorities to ensure that a stable, manageable ATM situation was established as quickly as possible. We also engaged actively in ensuring that all those involved in air traffic management in Europe were aware of the situation and knew the options available to them.
These events underlined once again the added value a pan-European network approach can bring to governments, airlines and passengers in the context of safety, security and capacity challenges.
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Updates on the different areas of our activity can be accessed on the November edition of the EUROCONTROL brief |
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International Civil Aviation Day: The Greening of Flight - maximizing compatibility between safe and orderly development of civil aviation and the quality of the environment |
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International Civil Aviation Day this year had as its theme ‘the greening of flight – maximising compatibility between safe and orderly development of civil aviation and the quality of the environment’.
EUROCONTROL has as one of its key objectives to strengthen air traffic management’s contribution to achieving environmental objectives – and to this end, we very much welcomed this particular theme. The day was all the more appropriate as this is the year that the Kyoto Protocol came into force, and as governments had just finished the meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Dealing with, and reducing, the environmental impacts of aviation are among the major challenges that we will face in the coming years. Already air traffic management has made a substantial contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions though programmes such as RVSM as well as by contributing to improved flight efficiency.
Noise issues also are being addressed through a variety of programmes including continuous descent approach. DMEAN in the medium term and Sesar in the longer-term will of course continue to address the issue in a system-wide manner.
Environmental concerns are likely to take on increasing importance in the future.
We must ensure that air traffic management is able to respond to the demands society makes of it.
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Updates on the different areas of our activity can be accessed on the December edition of the EUROCONTROL brief |
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Safety, our collective responsibility |
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Since its creation, EUROCONTROL has worked together with States and the aviation industry in general to ensure that the European air traffic management system is as safe as we can make it. Though Europe does have a remarkably good aviation safety record, the tragic accidents this summer both in Europe and elsewhere were a sharp reminder of the need to keep focused on how to continually improve what we do.
Most of the accidents and incidents that happen are human error related. Human error in designing new technologies, in maintenance of aircraft and ground based systems, in training, in daily operations. Sometimes procedures are outdated or need improvement. These mistakes, even the smallest ones, need to be known to the aviation community so that everybody can learn from them. Also the solutions that have been found to avoid re-occurrence must be shared more widely and a better means of dissemination is required. Best practices in safe operation of aviation also need to be shared, so that people do not have to “re-invent the wheel”.
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Access the message from the Director General |
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The number of flights in European airspace continues to increase steadily. Already this year has broken all previous records as twice we have had more than 30,000 flights in Europe in a single day. Underscoring this trend, EUROCONTROL's latest short-term forecast has revised predictions for European annual average traffic growth for 2005 up from 3.8% to 4.4%.
However, while this growth in flights is a positive signal it needs to be matched by a parallel increase in capacity and safety. Planned network capacity increase in Europe is of 4% which suggests that traffic growth will not be matched by capacity growth. As a result, we are expecting to see flow management delays increasing for the first time in 5 years. Preliminary figures suggest that the total delay could be 2.4 minutes per flight, up from 1.9 minute per flight in 2004. Of that total, 1.5 minutes would be en-route delay and 0.9 minutes would be attributable to airport delay.
These trends should set our alarm bells ringing.We need to work closely together over the coming months to put in place programmes to ensure that delays do not once again become a major issue, and to ensure that on a pan-European level we have in place the right strategies to ensure proactive air traffic flow and capacity management.
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Updates on the different areas of our activity can be accessed on the July edition of the EUROCONTROL brief. |
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Overall, 2004 was a good year for air traffic management. On the safety front, early statistics show that it was the safest year in the last two decades in terms of accident rates. And though the numbers of flights have grown substantially - an increase of 10% in Europe between 1999 and 2004, delays over the same period have fallen by an impressive 67%. The fact that delays have reached close to the economic optimum results in hundreds of millions in savings for airspace users. The cost of this increase in capacity has been limited - average year 2004 unit rates in Europe were 2.2% lower than 2003, and unit rates for 2005 are expected to fall even further - to 6.9% lower than 2004.
I am happy to report therefore that checked against its primary indicators, European Air Traffic Management has improved substantially over the last few years. However, this does not mean we can be complacent. Clearly given the challenges the future is bound to entail, Air Traffic Management performance must improve even further. In order to do this, I believe we must focus on three key elements. The first of these is to strengthen the trend towards more business orientation in Air Traffic Management, which has already resulted in better management of Air Traffic Management functions across the board. Secondly, we must ensure that we have the right level of regulation at national and pan-European level, and that regulation is primarily applied to those areas - such as safety - where it is most required. Thirdly, while recognising the importance of subsidiarity and local implementation and plans, in order to reach an optimal ATM network, we must not forget the added value that comes from concerted pan-European action.
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Updates on the different areas of our activity can be accessed on the April edition of the EUROCONTROL brief. |
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November 2004: DG's Update |
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Between May and October 2004, traffic increased by 5.3% over 2003 though average delay has remained low at 1.9 minutes of which 1.2 minutes is attributed to en-route delay. Between 1999 and 2004, air traffic flow management delays during the summer season have been reduced by 67%. While we are therefore on track to meet the target set by the Provisional Council in 2002 of a delay of one minute per flight, we know that the ongoing increase in traffic will put additional pressure on the ATM system. The last meeting of the Provisional Council supported a major new initiative being proposed by EUROCONTROL to improve the performance of the European ATM network within a 5-year timeframe by implementing a Concept of Operations called Dynamic Management of European Airspace Network (DMEAN). The initiative will deliver increased capacity and better utilization of the airspace through its more dynamic management.
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Updates on the different areas of our activity can be accessed on the November edition of the EUROCONTROL brief. |
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Air traffic in Europe is now growing faster than at any time since 1999 according to the figures for the first half of 2004. The rate of traffic growth has been increasing since the early part of this year – with traffic 6% higher in the second quarter of 2004 than the same period in 2003. Traffic for the first half of the year as a whole was 3.8% higher than in 2003.
Given these strong figures for the first half of the year, we now expect traffic to grow by around 4% in 2004. This would make 2004 our busiest year ever, taking us back to levels of growth we last saw in 1999.
While this is good news for the aviation industry as a whole, we know that there is much to be done if we are to ensure the capacity to deal safely and efficiently with this growing traffic. While current safety levels appear good, we know that the amount and quality of the data that we receive remains variable. The European safety regulatory system requires more resources, and while extensive data is fed to EUROCONTROL’s ESARRs’ implementation and monitoring programme, deficiencies are not always acted upon. As we have seen with major accident reports, these are not issues that we can afford to shy away from – and we must continue to address them over the coming months.
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Updates on the different areas of our activity can be accessed on the August edition of the EUROCONTROL brief. |
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The air transport industry would appear to be picking up – and providing that there are no new health threats, major military conflicts or sharp economic downturns, we seem once more to be heading towards a period of growth. It is true that we have lost about three years of growth overall. We’ll have 10.5 million flights in 2010 instead of 2007 as expected. But this pause has given us the time we needed to make up the capacity gap. Our delay figures are reassuring: for the moment, we are on top of the situation. However, with more growth expected, we have to make sure that safety is not affected and that supply for capacity does not lag behind demand. At the same time,we must ensure that our costs do not escalate and that we work towards a cost efficiency target for air traffic management, as recommended by the Provisional Council.
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Updates on the different areas of our activity can be accessed on the May edition of the EUROCONTROL brief. |
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February 2004: DG's update |
2003 was an excellent year for European air traffic management. With record levels of traffic, and the lowest-ever annual average delay, it would indeed seem that close cooperation between all members of the aviation community has allowed us to decouple traffic growth from delays.
2004 however started on a much sadder note, with the crash of Flash Airlines 604. Though the accident did not happen in European skies and the investigation is still pending, it is none the less a stark reminder that safety can never be taken for granted. Passengers across Europe are rightly demanding that we define and enforce the safety of the system as a whole. As part of a community, I believe that this is a challenge that we must take up this year.
At the same time, 2004 confronts us with another challenge that we must address as a community - the question of cost-efficiency. We made substantial progress on this issue in 2003, and I hope that 2004 will see concrete progress towards cost-efficiency targets for the ATM system as a whole.
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