European air traffic control (ATC) organisation Eurocontrol has hit back at claims by the Association of European Airlines (AEA) that ATC strategies have failed, causing delays to rise to a "critical level".
Eurocontrol says that the AEA's criticisms are "inaccurate, misleading and unsubstantiated". It claims the implication that Eurocontrol has failed to improve the delay situation is "an incorrect assessment of the concerted effort-to resolve ATC problems in Europe".
According to the AEA, in 1997 punctuality deteriorated for the fourth successive year, with 19.5% of departures delayed by more than 15min - 1% worse than in 1996. "This brings the industry back virtually to the level experienced in the crisis years of 1988-90, with all the improvements since then subsequently lost," says the AEA.
The AEA argues that more than 60% of delays were infrastructure-related, rising to about 65%in the busier second and third quarters.
AEA secretary-general Karl-Heinz Neumeister dismisses the various strategies adopted to rationalise European airspace - most recently the gate to gate concept of the ATM 2000+ strategy - as "a lot of papers and good intentions -the airline passenger does not need to know what these [strategies] stand for. All he or she needs to know is that these efforts were supposed to speed his or her progress from one airport to another, and evidently they have failed to deliver".
While acknowledging that ATC has more traffic to handle than ever, Neumeister says that "this is not something the airlines should apologise for".
The ATM 2000+ strategy aims to achieve uniform use of European airspace by 2005, followed by a new European management system by 2010. The scheme is to be presented to European transport ministers for approval in the second half of next year.
Eurocontrol responded to the criticism, saying that, while traffic rose by 7%in 1997 compared with the previous year, its figures reveal that total ATC-related delays remained the same and the average delay per flight decreased. It shows that additional ATC capacity has been introduced as a result of Eurocontrol activities such as the European ATC Harmonisation and Integration Programme (EATCHIP) and the Central Flow Management Unit.
"EATCHIP itself has already managed to achieve considerable progress in European air traffic management [ATM]. Furthermore, the ATM 2000+ strategy and the individual projects supporting it-will do much to relieve the actual congestion in European airspace, despite the relentless growth of air traffic," says Eurocontrol.
The organisation agrees that delays are "at an unacceptable level", but insists that only 20% are directly related to ATC, with factors such as weather, ground handling, airport management and the airlines responsible for the rest.
Source: Flight International
