Brussels, 22/02/2001 (Agence Europe) - On 7 March, the European Commission is expected to adopt a communication on the Single European Sky, to be presented at the informal summit of Stockholm on 23 and 24 March. The communication should set out the principles that the Commission plans to follow in the legislative proposals that it will in principle present before the summer. The aim is to improve air traffic control in Europe and reduce the considerable delays, on the basis of recommendations made in the report by the High Level Group on Single Sky presented last December (see EUROPE of 13 December, p.13 and 19 December, p.8).
The communication will cover four sectors: 1) the map of air routes; 2) the economic regulation and the organisation of air traffic control services; 3) the harmonisation of equipment and systems; 4) and the organisation of coordination between the civilian and military users of the air space and the development of a binding system for "flexible use of air space" at European level (on this last point, see EUROPE of 1 February, pages 14 and 15).
On economic aspects, the communication should prepare a Community framework for the provision of services, providing for the separation of regulation and service activities, when these are assured by the same entity. The regulatory framework should also specify the economic status of service providers, define the public service missions and provide for methods that encourage providers to invest more to meet market demands. The future regulatory framework should, de facto, prepare the ground for eventual liberalisation, although the Commission is opposed to this. For now, however, only the United Kingdom foresees partnerships between the public and private sectors in the air traffic control sector and has set in place a regulatory economic framework, says a Community source.
The question of civilian and military coordination is far from settled. Some Member States consider that the question comes exclusively within the first pillar (Community), while others call for a structure that comes under common foreign and security policy (here also, see EUROPE of 1 February).
Still 25% of flights delayed over 15 minutes on intra-European flights, says AEA
Presenting their annual statistics recently on air delays, European airline companies have called on the European Commission to take swift action. In 2000, an average of 25.5% of all European flight departures were delayed for over 15 minutes, states the Association of European Airlines (AEA) in a press release. With the exception of the 30.3% of delayed flights in 1999, the year of the war in Kosovo, one has to go back to 1989 to find such delays, states AEA.
The Milan-Malpensa and Madrid airports are still in the lead as far as delays are concerned, followed by Brussels, Istanbul and Zurich, whose performances have worsened over the past year. The Scandinavian airports of Helsinki, Copenhagen and Stockholm record, however, fewer than 15% delays. According to AEA, "as always, most delays are due to the airport management and to air traffic control problems". "The other sources of delay, such as the late arrival of flights, show all too clearly how vulnerable the industry is when delays upset the daily cycle of operations", states the AEA press release.
Nonetheless, according to the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol), air traffic control is at the origin of 50% of delays, including 20% chain delays, and the airline companies themselves are at the origin of 11%.