SESAR - For mange konger på haugen

New Eurocontrol Chief Proposes Sharing Sesar Initiatives

AINONLINE

by  BILL CAREY

Frank Brenner, who became Eurocontrol’s director general in January, is calling for greater collaboration among ANSPs in implementing Sesar initiatives. (Photo: Bill Carey)

February 13, 2013, 2:49 PM

The new director general of Europe’s intergovernmental ATC organization proposes that air navigation service providers (ANSPs) implement Single European Sky improvements at the regional level rather than as individual entities, both to constrain costs and improve operational efficiency.

In a speech at the World ATM Congress in Madrid on Wednesday, Eurocontrol director general Frank Brenner sounded a recurring theme at the conference—the pressing need to unify Europe’s fragmented airspace jurisdictions. Brenner succeeded David McMillan as Eurocontrol’s chief executive in January.

Aircraft operators in Europe now pay twice as much per controlled flight hour as do operators in the U.S., according to Brenner. In the past, he said, the continent’s ANSPs could stretch cost increases over increasing numbers of flights. But with air traffic depressed in Europe, that will not be an option for ANSPs to invest in new, efficiency-producing technologies being generated by the Single European Sky ATM Research (Sesar) effort. In its forthcoming medium-term air traffic forecast, Eurocontrol will predict that air traffic this year will decline relative to 2012, Brenner said.