EU to unveil air-traffic revolution

The European Union will unveil today details of an ambitious plan for a £13bn (€19.1bn) air-traffic management system to cope with an expected doubling in the number of flights over the next 15 years.

Dubbed “Sesame”, the plan aims to make flights safer, less polluting and easier for air traffic controllers to monitor.

European air routes would gradually be reorganised over the next 15 years so that airspace and traffic flows were managed through state-of-the-art technologies, EU spokesman Stefaan Rynck said.

Sesame’s start-up phase, which would run through 2007, is budgeted at £70m (€103m) and will provide jobs for 200 people. The subsequent “validation and deployment” phases – running from 2008 to 2020 – would cost about £194m (€285.4m) a year, Rynck said.

The funding for Sesame will come from the EU’s long-term science and research budget. It does not need to be approved by EU governments.

The EU estimates Sesame’s economic trickle-down effect to total some £39bn (€57.4bn) and generate an estimated 200,000 jobs, while cutting down on plane noise and pollution and stepping up safety.

Europe’s aviation industry has long complained that, in an age of broadband communications, air-traffic management still relies on technologies that can be 50 years old, while traffic has more than doubled since then.

Ground-to-air traffic control communication still is done on congested VHF radio frequencies and air routes are organised according to ground-based, 1950s-era navigation devices.

Also, Europe’s air traffic control operations are divided along national boundaries.

“Virtually no automation has been introduced in air traffic management decision-making, which puts a particularly heavy pressure on the shoulders of air-traffic controllers,” says a recent EU report on the state of the aviation industry in Europe.

The Sesame programme will bring together EU governments, airports, airlines and air navigation service providers and Eurocontrol, the European organisation for the safety of air navigation.