Another significant debate in the Committee’s plenary session last week concerned an opinion drafted by Jacek Krawczyk (Employers’ Group) about the performance and sustainability of the European aviation system (the Commission’s proposal is known in shorthand as ‘Single European Sky’). There is but one sky, clearly, but the European sky is fractured by all sorts of different air traffic control responsibilities. Integrating all of these into a ‘single sky’ makes obvious sense from the safety, economic and environmental point of view. Some of the statistics Jacek reeled off were stunning; some 30,000 flights daily involving almost 5,000 commercial aircraft covering an aviation market of 37 countries and 500 million citizens. Because of air traffic fragmentation each of those airplanes flies, on average, 50 kilometres more than it needs to, with all that that implies for the environment and the economy. I found the picture below whilst surfing for an illustration for this post. It’s taken from a satellite and shows air traffic vapour trails over the UK and it speaks for itself, really. Oh, and what made the debate particularly convincing is that Jacek is a former airline pilot, so he really does know what he’s talking about…
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