back to article Brussels' transport chief demands a single European sky to end 'air traffic gridlock'

EC officials are pushing for countries in the 28-member bloc to bring an end to "gridlock in the skies" above Europe, by urging them to be more flexible about national airspace. The EU's transport commissioner, Violeta Bulc, said during a speech in Rome, Italy on Friday that attitudes needed to change to address what she …

  1. DavCrav

    But then how would French air traffic controllers go on strike?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So, let me see if I have this right. One ATC for all of the EU. So, a strike by French ATC workers in this new Super ATC, and all of Europe grinds to a halt, rather than just France. I say keep it as is, thanks.

    1. Cliff

      Alternatively, other nodes are able to take over, so France can do as it pleases without destabilising the system

  3. Thought About IT

    Chauvinism

    The EC have been talking about a Single European Sky for 14 years, and actually adopted the regulation in 2008, so don't hold your breath for any progress. Air traffic controllers currently work within national boundaries, so there's a lot of turf fighting to be overcome before Governments agree to this. It probably doesn't help that we privatised ours, so can't tell them to share their duties with the rest of Europe, and UKIP and their like minded colleagues in the Tory party are hardly likely to agree to Johnny Foreigner controlling our airspace. Sensible idea though.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Chauvinism

      I think many Tories (and probably UKIP) are in favour of a single open european sky.

      Bigging Hill to Frankfurt, non-stop and home in time for breakfast.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Chauvinism

        "Bigging Hill to Frankfurt, non-stop and home in time for breakfast."

        Never in the field of Anglophone war humour were so many inaccuracies embodied in so few words. But I did appreciate the joke.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Chauvinism

          Flying coach?

    2. Matt Bryant Silver badge

      Re: Thoughtless Re: Chauvinism

      ".....It probably doesn't help that we privatised ours, so can't tell them to share their duties with the rest of Europe, and UKIP and their like minded colleagues in the Tory party are hardly likely to agree to Johnny Foreigner controlling our airspace....." Yes, because UK airspace is right in the centre of Europe and every flight has to pass through it to get anywhere, right? Oh, no it doesn't, we're actually geographically on the periphery of Europe, which makes your Leftie whining about privatisation completely irrelevant. It also ignores that the British MoD does co-operate with NATO for control of military airspace across the UK and Europe. You need to go look to Brussels for the cause of the problem, not the British political Right.

  4. Dan 55 Silver badge

    "This is not a challenge to European diversity or the sovereignty of any country"

    I wonder what 28 ministries of defence have got to say about that.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "This is not a challenge to European diversity or the sovereignty of any country"

      An excellent point. A country can't maintain its own sovereignty if it doesn't control its own airspace.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "This is not a challenge to European diversity or the sovereignty of any country"

        > A country can't maintain its own sovereignty if it doesn't control its own airspace.

        This only concerns civilian traffic (CAT and GA) under the provisions of the Chicago Convention (1948). State and military aviation is an entirely separate matter.

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

          1. Oninoshiko

            Re: "This is not a challenge to European diversity or the sovereignty of any country"

            "Much as it tries and thinks otherwise. This is nothing to do with US law my friend."

            The Chicago Convention has as much to do with US law as the Kyoto Accord has to do with Japanese law.

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Convention_on_International_Civil_Aviation

        2. M7S

          Re: "This is not a challenge to European diversity or the sovereignty of any country"

          @AC "This only concerns civilian traffic (CAT and GA) under the provisions of the Chicago Convention (1948). State and military aviation is an entirely separate matter."

          The trouble is these things can very rapidly become a military matter when (as for example a couple of weeks ago) that large Antonov suddely stops responding to ATC radio. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-29823148 and I'd be wary of beleiving that every node which might at some stage be responsible for our airspace under this plan will know exactly who to callon the hurry-up.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: "This is not a challenge to European diversity or the sovereignty of any country"

            > The trouble is [....]

            I'm sorry but, an aviation professional, your post does not make one iota of sense to me. If you could rephrase it so as to make your point clear, I may (or may not) be able to offer some elucidating information, provided it's within my limited sphere of knowledge. Thanks.

            1. M7S

              Re: "This is not a challenge to European diversity or the sovereignty of any country"

              Apologies if I was not clear.

              Currently as I understand it, each country controls aircraft in its own airspace. If a plane fails to respond, the military of that country can be called on by the local ATC to investigate as in the article I referenced. They'll know who to contact and how to do so quickly.

              If the control is centralised, then unless there is some pan-European air force on call, a controller in whatever node is in charge (lets say for example that a centre in Italy had for some reason got responsibility for Europe for that shift/day/week/whatever, perhaps if the Northern Node is undergoing some technical issue) seeing a problem such as that described in the article has got to work out which nation to contact to scramble their aircraft, and then perhaps (in the case of a large country) which region/airbase/whatever to direct the call to. I am sure they'll have procedures but its all adding time to the response.

              A busy controller might go a bit "meh" if dealing with an errant aircraft in some far away place of which they perosnally care little, becoming in effect a call centre. If I may draw an analogy, fine for controlling your AA breakdown response (within reason), not fine for sending you a fire engine when your abode is going all Piper Alpha on you.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                @M7S Re: "This is not a challenge to European diversity or the sovereignty of any country"

                I'm afraid your post is full of guesses as to what may or may not happen in the future, and assumptions about the current situation, most of which are wrong. Suffice to say though, that interceptions are coordinated cross-border already.

                And btw, it's Chicago Convention 1944, not '48. My mistake, I always get that one wrong.

  5. Gordon 10

    A European decision that has only positives.

    So why don't they spend more time pushing this that some of their other lunacy.

  6. All names Taken
    Alien

    Cool rationalism?

    Now by what assumption based on premise: all EU ATCs become one, means that it will operate better?

    I can understand the automatic sequence of thought that goes something like: fragmented ATC system across Europe presently makes for wasted effort and resources so make it ONE ATC system in Europe and all such problems will automagically disappear.

    But it won't automagically work will it?

    The first priority is to agree on stuff that is creating wasted efforts, resources n stuff then agree on how to solve it and that don't take a one EU system of ATC.

    1. Tom 13

      Re: Cool rationalism?

      I get it. It's painful to admit that to get the benefits of the EU nations have to give up some sovereignty. But that's the reality of the situation.

      On this side of the pond we went through a similar stage under the Articles of Confederacy. Fortunately for us the new country was young enough, and the problems of the confederate government so severe we confronted it head on and created a new government under what the new Constitution.

      You're going to have to do the same. What I see as the most vexing problem for you is that your new confederated government is even less tied to the people it ought to be working for than are the national governments whom the people are generally already unhappy about. After that you can deal with the lesser but still possibly insurmountable issue of an Englishman being unwilling to live with a Frenchman having a say in how he goes about his life, vice versa, and crossed with 26 other countries.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I wish they would just GO AWAY !

    I can't comment on our commercial traffic colleagues, but for us general avaition plebs, the EU and its evil spawn EASA have been an unmitigated clusterf**k.

    Like: forcing all UK gliders to "register" and jump through assorted airworthyness hoops, when the existing system was working fine. Used to be: if it's airworthy you can fly it. Now: you can't fly it unless the paperwork has been returned + all sorts of other BS.

    Like: Changing our (perfectly satisfactory) existing licences for EASA licences - but then changing their minds so that they can go round the regulation loop again. I guess it keeps them in jobs.

    And (of course) we get to pay extra for this.

    Do not be fooled: these people do not have anyone's best interests at heart other than their own.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I wish they would just GO AWAY !

      > but for us general avaition plebs, the EU and its evil spawn EASA

      Speaking as a holder of an ATPL licence issued by the UK CAA, people at the Belgrano have been very skilful in ensuring they would get as much of a power grab as possible while blaming it on EASA.

      If you have not participated in the (pretty open, for a change) rule-making process then you put yourself at a disadvantage, because the CAA have. Still, I suggest you carefully go through Regulation 1178/2011/EU and see if any instructions or advise you receive from the CAA appear legitimate. If it doesn't, question it. Ultimately, it is up to each national agency to interpret the regulation so you will likely have to take it up with them directly.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Article As Clear As Mud

    I did not understand what information the article is actually trying to convey. It is likely based on a press release which itself would have been confusing.

    However, for your info: all commercial air traffic in Europe¹ is already coordinated from a central location (Eurocontrol, in Brussels). Even if no national, or for that matter FIR², boundaries are crossed. Every IFR flight plan goes to Eurocontrol and has to be accepted by the CFMU³ where a computer evaluates your flight plan against the hundreds of airspace restrictions (called RAD), everyone else's flight plans, and airspace+airport published capacity numbers. The effective implementation of this, a number of years ago already, is why nowadays you hardly ever have to hold overhead your destination, burning fuel needlessly, when an airport is swamped with traffic and why you may have to delay your take off (the CFMU assigns the slots).

    In light of that, I can just take a wild guess as to what Ms Bulc might have been referring to. A quick guess might be that she intends to rationalise the FIR layout over Europe, or route management--those RADs are a fucking nightmare, and most are the responsibility of individual FICs⁴ who do not always coordinate with each other as well as they could. But that's just my guess. More and better information is needed.

    ¹ Technically, all IFR flights.

    ² Flight Information Region. A bit of airspace--bigger countries in Europe tend to have multiple FIRs. Smaller countries may operate under a single FIR

    ³ Central Flow Management Unit.

    ⁴ Flight Information Centres. More or less, the bunch of controllers and bureaucrats in charge of a FIR.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Eurocontrol

      Thank you.

      It feels like 20 years since colleagues were working on Eurocontrol infrastructure and I didn't understand its role anyway.

      Thanks for the overview.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Eurocontrol

        > It feels like 20 years since colleagues were working on Eurocontrol infrastructure and I didn't understand its role anyway.

        You are welcome sir. To be fair, the role of Eurocontrol has not been clear to anyone since the beginning. As I understand it (and in this I'm not more knowledgeable than anyone else--I just used to be a "customer" when I was flying commercially), their original mission was a lot more ambitious, sort of like being the single air traffic services provider for all upper airspace over most of Europe, but local providers, unions, and the like lobbied their respective governments and their role was much reduced. Nowadays they mostly take care of IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) flight plan coordination and billing (they do other administrative bits as well but I don't know much about it).

        Again, take the above with a big grain of salt since I'm not knowledgeable in the matter--that's just the hearsay I picked up over the years.

  9. P. Lee
    FAIL

    Your pesky insistance that you rule yourselves is getting in the way of our efficiencies

    Your uniqueness will be added to our own. We are the European.

    --

    Get lost. There is no such nation as "Europe." We are not one people and have little interest in being cajoled into pretending that we are so that Brussels can have more power. The incessant infighting prevents us from jumping on the tyrannical superpower trajectory the Americans are on.

    That's probably a good thing.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Your pesky insistance that you rule yourselves is getting in the way of our efficiencies

      > Get lost. There is no such nation as "Europe."

      And none has claimed that, so what is it exactly that you are ranting about?

  10. Alister

    The EU's transport commissioner, Violeta Bulc, said during a speech in Rome, Italy on Friday

    Are we really considered that thick nowadays that we need to be told which country Rome is in?

  11. Dan Paul

    All you do is ARGUE and you are not even a single country.

    All I see about the EU and decisions by the EUC is lots of argument, even more than we have over here. Most of the arguments revolve around which Brussels politician gets to be on top.

    We have State Law and Federal Law here. State is supposed to cover the local picture and Federal is supposed to cover the big picture. Though they developed over time, they developed TOGETHER as we were one union to begin with. That is not the case for the EU.

    What you have for the EU is 28 versions of federal law which never agree on anything.

    How can you even consider to be a "union" like that? Let alone have any economy of scale for combining services that can be affected by a union environment (like ATC) from one country that goes on strike all the time.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: All you do is ARGUE and you are not even a single country.

      > How can you even consider to be a "union" like that?

      Remember that this is an economic union¹, not a union in the sense of a federal state as in your example.

      > Let alone have any economy of scale for combining services that can be affected by a union environment

      Union and other national interests, that is a good and pertinent point, and one that many areas of governments and businesses have not quite grasped yet. This is also where the European Commission (EC) and in certain cases, national courts, get involved when any of the four so-called fundamental freedoms (free movement of goods, people, services, and capital) are curtailed. It's getting better² but there is still a way to go and, of course, centuries of baggage to contend with, mostly as regards people's mentality.

      ¹ Primarily.

      ² Or worse, depending on your pro- or anti-EU point of view.

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