Air traffic control strikes over the principle of the Single European Sky are pointless, as well as being unfair on air travellers
The co-ordinated multinational air traffic controllers' strike in Europe last week is the first warning of workforce disquiet about the agreed policy for the continent's future air traffic management (ATM) system. The policy, known as the Single European Sky (SES), has been accepted, in principle at least, by the 15 member states of the European Union and most of the 31 member nations of Eurocontrol.
There are many reasons why the SES has to be an objective, but the best way to make it crystal clear is to consider what would happen if the European continent were to be given a clean sheet of paper (and no political interference) and asked to design the best and most efficient ATM system. Would the new air traffic services map and operating system be what we have today? The answer is an unequivocol no. Today's system is a patchwork of nation-shaped sectors working with different operating systems to different standards. The best that can be said is that, since a crisis caused by rapid traffic growth and gross ATM inefficiency paralysed Europe's skies in the late 1980s, Eurocontrol has succeeded in achieving a degree of harmonisation between them over the last 15 years.
Despite the traffic dip caused by the economic downturn and the 11 September terrorist attacks, and the addition of 20% capacity by implementing reduced vertical separation minima, another capacity crisis is only a matter of time - probably three years, at most five.
Europe can deal with this, either by trying to make marginal improvements in this patchwork of systems, or by designing the skies to work as a single system with fewer - but larger - air traffic control centres. Theoretically one mega-centre could do it all, but this is not acceptable because a central failure – or terrorist attack - could destroy Europe's entire ATM system. There have to be complete, independent back-ups. The USA, with the same geographical area as Eastern and Western Europe together, manages its skies with five large air route traffic control centres compared with Europe's 40-odd centres of various sizes. It is arguable whether, given a clean sheet, the US Federal Aviation Administration would plan as many as five today. The US centres have the advantage that the sectors they control are designed to be efficient simply from the ATM point of view. Their sector limits are not decided, as Europe's often are, by a wandering river or mountain range that marks a national border.
This reduction in the number of centres concerns controllers and it is easy to sympathise with them. They envisage massive manning cuts and the offer of either relocation or redundancy if their centre is one of those that closes. In fact, one of their fears is misplaced. Rationalisation into fewer, larger centres would not, alone, lead to workforce reductions - or if it did there would be few redundancies. The factor that will, in the long-term, undoubtedly lead to a smaller controller (and engineer) workforce is the introduction of new technology. This will occur whether or not the number of centres is reduced. But for another 10 years at least, ATC will remain highly reliant on traditional controller skills.
The controller strike, however, is a reminder that there are many nettles still to be grasped and there are going to be as many politicians who will shrink from this as there are control centres. If the number of centres is reduced - as it must be - to fewer than the number of European nations, that means that air traffic control will no longer be a national task. It may remain, according to International Civil Aviation Organisation guidelines, the responsibility of each state to see that safe ATC is provided in its sovereign skies, but the state itself does not have to be the air traffic services provider. If a particular state is not its own provider, it follows that services will either be provided by a centre in another state, or by a privatised provider. These are concepts that send chills down the spines of many ATC employees and will also shock local politicians who have not given much thought yet to what the results would be if a control centre in their own constituencies were to close down.
For the controllers' unions to hold Europe's air transport system to ransom, at this stage, however, is unacceptable. The only thing that has been decided about the SES so far is the principle of a single sky - thrashing out the detail has not even been started. There is political and industrial pain to come, but at least until the detail of the SES is proposed it is meaningless and irresponsible to take blanket industrial action.
Source: Flight International
