Emma Kelly/LONDON David Learmount/LONDON
Private provision of air traffic services (ATS) may prove to be the way of the future. Canada's ATS is already privatised - but as a trust. The UK has just launched a "public/private partnership" for its National Air Traffic Services (NATS). New Zealand has corporatised its air traffic control and Germany is pondering privatising its already corporatised system.
Despite an effective forum for ATS harmonisation - Eurocontrol - Europe's ATS efficiency is seriously impaired by dragging political anchors. Every policy or equipment investment decision needs clearance by the transport ministers of Eurocontrol's 28 member states, who meet only twice a year. It is also saddled with an airspace control structure dictated by "feudal" borders which - in the European Union - have no significance for any other form of transport. A summer of air travel delay is forecast.
"Air traffic control efficiency is very difficult in government systems," says Wolfgang Philipp, Eurocontrol's senior director. "They are always limited by government rules and a lot of limitations." Private ATSs are also the answer to border problems, he says. "Separation from governmental control is the only way, in the longer run, to give air navigation service providers the financial and managerial freedom to run their businesses. Nationalist thinking disappears and business thinking arrives."
Philipp believes the privatisation of air navigation service providers is right and inevitable. As for the chairman of the UK's NATS, Sir Roy McNulty, "the status quo is not an option".
Through Eurocontrol, Europe has defined the ATC system tools to increase capacity and formalised them in an agreement known as ATM-2000+ Strategy. Looking forward as far as 2015, it envisages pan-European air traffic management (ATM) and the abolition of national borders for ATC.
The desirability of a move to autonomous air navigation service providers was among the recommendations agreed at the International Civil Aviation Organisation's May 1998 Worldwide CNS/ATM Systems Implementation Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (CNS/ATM stands for communications, navigation and surveillance/air traffic management). ICAO strongly advocates co-operative airspace management.
The main reason that ICAO pushes for autonomy is that it provides financial freedom to invest in more efficient CNS/ATM and implement it more quickly. "Autonomous," does not necessarily mean "privatised", ICAO emphasises: it defines an autonomous authority as an independent organisation established to operate certain systems and provide specific services, with operational and financial freedom to carry out its functions. Autonomy, says ICAO, also implies corporate or commercial-type management.
Union disapproval
Controller unions, on the whole, do not object to trusts or to corporatisation, but do not approve of privatisation. The Institution of Professionals, Managers and Specialists, which represents UK controllers, does not approve of the public/private partnership, saying the profit motive threatens safety because the company no longer has safety as its sole objective.
Tom Fudakowski, director of air navigation services at Nav Canada, says the Canadian organisation was born of a consensus by airlines, government, private aircraft owners, pilots and unions. The motivation was frustration with the inefficiency of the old system, now structured as a "not-for-profit" trust overseen by the interested parties, including regulator Transport Canada. Surpluses go back into the system.
Last week, the UK Government cleared NATS for sale under a public/private partnership, in which 51% of the shares will be sold to a "suitable" private sector bidder, and the government will retain 49%, plus a golden share. McNulty, who was recruited to see NATS through its transition to autonomy, sees not only the opportunity for providing the £1 billion ($1.6 billion) investment needed in the system over the next 10 years, but the chance to expand if the market is allowed to liberalise.
Philipp predicts: "I can see, in five to 10 years' time, air navigation service provision moving in similar ways to the telecom industry. We will see fewer air navigation service providers and more co-operation among them. We cannot afford to do otherwise in the future."
The airlines, whether through the Association of European Airlines or International Air Transport Association, have a common agenda, and it harmonises with Philipp's vision. IATA has just brought out a five-point plan. Its director general, Pierre Jeanniot, plans to meet transport ministers of the main Eurocontrol member states one by one to spread the gospel, which includes:
• ensuring rapid progress toward a common airspace policy for the European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC) states, common rulemaking and speedy implementation;
• giving Eurocontrol regulatory powers:
• privatising or corporatising all national ATS providers;
• devising efficiency incentives for ATS providers;
• implementing an ECAC-wide capacity planning system.
The universal message to governments is that if they cannot provide efficient air traffic control, they should hand over its management to organisations which can.
Source: Flight International
