WRITTEN QUESTION E-2130/02

by Mario Borghezio (NI) to the Commission

(17 July 2002)

Subject: Air safety and the unification of traffic control in Europe

The airline disaster involving a mid-air collision between a Tupolev 154 and a Boeing 757 over Lake Constance claimed several dozen lives and drew attention once again to the urgent need to

modernise and coordinate Europe's air traffic control systems. As things stand at the moment, a plane flying between, for example, Rome and Paris, is handled by six different air traffic control centres during the course of its journey. This situation is fraught with coordination difficulties aggravated by the fact that the various centres do not use the same computer systems. Experts are not ruling out the possibility of the inquest into this latest accident finding that this succession of mini control centres that are not properly coordinated poses an additional threat to air safety.

Would the Commission not agree that there is an urgent need for it to monitor the effectiveness of the arrangements for coordinating European control centres, on which planes flying over Europe depend, in order to ensure that they provide the necessary safety guarantees, not least with a view to the establishment of a single European sky?

Joint answerto Written Questions E-2130/02 and E-2159/02given by Mrs de Palacio on behalf of the Commission

(22 August 2002)

The information available on the collision between two aircraft over Lake Constance does not, at this stage, allow us to draw any conclusions as to the cause of the accident while the enquiry is still under way. The information would appear to confirm that the automatic warning system on the ground was not in use because it was being serviced. Following the tragedy, the Commission stressed that it was premature to directly connect the problems which arose at the time of the accident, where human error also seems to have been a major factor, with the solutions offered by the Single European Sky initiative. However, some considerations of a general nature are valid today, as they were before the accident occurred.

The growth in air traffic in recent years has put more pressure on national air traffic control systems. More data is exchanged between control centres and there is greater coordination between them. Rules must be observed regarding airspace structure, data exchange, means of communication and the procedures to follow if the system breaks down. Responsibility for ensuring that the rules are correctly observed and are effective lies first with the service providers and, second, with the national authorities, who must monitor their application.

Although the information provided by Eurocontrol and the service providers points to a consistently high level of safety, the European system does have several shortcomings:

- air traffic control capacity has not been sufficiently increased to deal with the growth in traffic;

- control centres are not sufficiently interoperable at present, mainly because so many different systems are in use;

- the present configuration of airspace (control areas and routes) dictated by national interests does not minimise conflict situations and the risk of accident;

- the privatisation of service providers has not been accompanied by the setting up of national supervisory bodies responsible for ensuring that the rules are observed and imposing penalties when they are not.

The aim of the Single European Sky initiative is to improve the situation, i.e. increase capacity, improve interoperability (of systems and procedures), organise airspace more efficiently and ensure that the rules are being correctly observed. It will enable common rules to be introduced regarding procedures, equipment and training and provide for contingency planning to reduce the risk of accident and guarantee a high level of safety.

Following recent events, on 12 September 2002 the Commission will meet with the Directors-General for Civil Aviation from the Member States and countries associated with the Union (Switzerland, Norway and Iceland) to discuss air transport safety issues.