WRITTEN QUESTION E-0077/01

by Erik Meijer (GUE/NGL) to the Commission

(29 January 2001)

Subject: The threat of a major air disaster because of shrinking capacity for civil aviation

1. Can the Commission confirm that the Single European Sky report which it and the Council will receive in late January gives serious cause for concern at the move from near disasters towards real disasters, because air traffic control authorities no longer have an overview of all the consequences of their actions, there will be a growing shortage of air traffic controllers, there is pressure to land before runways are clear and in an overfull air space it is not possible to increase the intervals between successive landings?

2. To what extent, in the Commission's opinion, are these problems the result of an unresolved power struggle between different air traffic control bodies and conflicting ideas about their territory and their responsibilities? What solution does the Commission feel it can support?

3. Based on the capacity of the air space above the Member States of the European Union which, given the current technical state of air traffic control, can be used safely if all military restrictions persisting since the end of the Cold War are removed, can the Commission say what percentage of this capacity is currently actually used for civil aviation?

4. What is the percentage use of the capacity which can be used safely, as referred to in the previous question, if the military restrictions continuing after the end of the Cold War are maintained?

5. In the twentieth century it was generally assumed that the capacity for growth in long-distance transport was limited on land and unlimited in the air, but that appears to be increasingly untrue. In the Commission's view, what are the future limits on the volume of air traffic assuming the requirements of full safety and that achieving that level of safety does not lie in a further increase in the area taken up by airports and greater noise pollution?

6. Does the Commission view the report as a reason, in future assessments of developments in air transport, to lay less emphasis one-sidedly on complaints about flight delays and lengthening of travelling time or on the economic interests and growth expectations of regions around airports, and to concentrate more on the limits of the available capacity which have to be taken into account in order to continue to maintain a high level of safety?

Answer given by Mrs de Palacio on behalf of the Commission

(13 March 2001)

1. Owing to the major delays caused by the lack of air traffic controllers noted in 1999 the Commission set up a High Level Group of representatives of the national civil and military air traffic control authorities. That Group delivered its report in November 2000. The report has provided the pointers needed in order to boost air traffic control for the purpose of consolidating safety and improving performance. One may list, among the intended measures, the development of a regulatory approach enabling more assurances to be given as regards compliance with safety standards,

together with incentives to recruit controllers in order to deal with the expected shortfall. The Commission is preparing to put forward proposals for laws in order to follow up the report's findings.

2. Air-transport providers carry out their responsibilities within national airspace. There is efficient cooperation among such companies, which means that the passage of aircraft from one national territory to another is generally fluid. Nevertheless, the constraints on air traffic make an approach based on national territories increasingly obsolete. Moreover the Commission is planning to regulate the use and form of airspace in order to manage it as a continuum.

3. and 4. Civil traffic must use corridors that often do not permit optimum traffic organisation, more especially because of the need to by-pass areas used for military purposes. In certain Member States those areas are large and constitute a genuine impediment even though this varies with time. It is felt that more rational organisation of traffic would enable capacity to be increased by many multiples of 10 % in certain cases. The Commission is funding a research project which will enable the gains in capacity to be expected from organising traffic more rationally to be plotted more accurately.

5. The Commission feels that the actual limits do not so much reside in air traffic control as in the lack of airport capacity and in the need to soften the environmental impact of air transport. However, the limits are not immutable: they depend, in particular, on any progress which may be achieved in improved airport operation and in the scope for using secondary airports, and in reducing noise nuisances and the emission of greenhouse gases.

6. The Commission is seeking to strike a balance between these concerns and the need to have a high-performance transport network in which air transport occupies a prominent place. It is currently drafting a white paper on the development of transport policy which is intended to fuel a debate on congestion and intermodal transport.