Partnership for Performance and Growth

EUROCONTROL and Association of European Airlines: Partnership for Performance and Growth

The air transport industry continues to grow as more and more passengers take to the skies. However, the industry is still challenged by fuel prices, security threats, environmental issues and the potential capacity squeezes that this high level of growth brings in its wake.

In order to overcome these challenges, the industry needs to be able to rely on superior performance from infrastructure networks and services. These networks – Air Traffic Management (ATM) and airports forming two of the most visible – have to work in smooth partnership with airlines and other airspace users to ensure that the highest standards are achieved.


EUROCONTROL is acutely aware of how much the airlines have done over the last five years to improve their own performance, especially in the area of cost-effectiveness. In our opinion, it behoves ATM to do its best to support the airlines’ superlative efforts and make certain that the system is the best possible, particularly from a cost point of view. In line with this thinking, various studies on cost-efficiency have been undertaken by EUROCONTROL’s Performance Review Commission (PRC). Their findings are unsettling.

En-route horizontal inefficiencies, for instance, cost airspace users some E1.4 billion annually. Improving en-route horizontal flight efficiency by one-third during weekends could generate annual savings in the order of E130 million per annum. Work has begun on an initiative to make these improvements a reality.

However, the main cause of these inefficiencies is not, as was previously thought, the national borders. In fact, the sub-optimal structure of civil/military airspace is a major contributor. This is an area in which EUROCONTROL, with its dual responsibility for both civil and military matters, can make a sizeable contribution.

There is also the fundamental issue of fragmentation. The PRC estimates that fragmentation of air navigation service providers and control centres incurs additional costs of up to E1.4 billion per annum – an impressive sum when set against the fact that the entire cost of en-route air traffic management in Europe is in the order of E6 billion each year.

These factors will compound the challenge posed by increasing traffic levels in the future. Traffic has been growing steadily since 2001 in Europe and will probably continue to grow at a rate of around 3-4 per cent per annum. This means that traffic figures in 2024 will be double those of today, reaching around 18 million flights per year. Such an amount of traffic could potentially have a significant impact on safety and capacity levels.

In order to make certain that safety and capacity will not be unduly affected, a number of technical and operational developments will have to be made. Together with all aviation stakeholders – notably the airlines – EUROCONTROL is planning and working on ensuring that safety and capacity targets are met; it is dedicated to ensuring that future systems are built in time and that inefficiencies are ironed out.

In short, EUROCONTROL aims at facilitating the provision of an ATM system that is safe, efficient, capacious – and one that gives excellent value for money. The pages that follow will give you a more precise idea of how we intend to meet this goal.