EU Announces 20 Billion Air Traffic System

By Don Phillips

The European Union unveiled a plan Thursday for a 20 billion air traffic control system to tame the Continent’s crowded airspace and to allow a doubling of the number of flights in the next 15 years.

The new Sesar system, backed by 30 European air transport companies and associations, will not produce immediate results. Planning will take 2 years, followed by at least 13 years of construction and testing. The initial phase is budgeted for 60 million, or about $70 million

New air traffic systems are rapidly moving toward allowing pilots or airline dispatchers to select their own routes and altitudes, with the traffic system and its controllers settling any conflicts, shifting their roles from “control” to “management” of the skies.

The new European system is intended to enhance safety and to produce more reliable and shorter flight routes reducing pollution than the current system, much of which dates from the 1950s and 1960s.

The European system, which is virtually an antique, relies on radio communication on VHF frequencies, and traffic is guided by ground-based radio beacons. Airliners today are equipped with satellite-based navigation and communications systems, but their usefulness is limited by the air traffic system supporting them. An earlier EU report noted that “virtually no automation” has been installed in the current traffic system to aid decision-making.

Although no final decisions will be made for years, such a new system is almost certain to be based on some form of satellite navigation. In fact, the European Commission vice president, Jacques Barrot, said he would recommend that Sesar use Europe’s Galileo satellite system, now under development, rather than the Global Positioning Satellite system, operated by the U.S. government.

Further complicating European air travel, current traffic systems are divided along national boundaries, and the route system has grown in a hodgepodge manner as routes were approved by each of the 25 countries that have joined the EU.

In implementing a new air traffic control system, however, air traffic must keep moving as new equipment and literally billions of new connections must be installed and tested without interrupting the daily flow of passengers or compromising safety.

A consortium of U.S. companies familiar with the lengthy and often frustrating task of modernizing the air traffic control in the crowded skies of the United States, including Honeywell International, Rockwell Collins and Boeing, have said they would be interested in working on the Sesar system.

The contract for Sesar would be a huge boost for Boeing, which established its new air traffic control division only a few years ago and has been awaiting its first major contract to justify the very expensive gamble of entering a competitive business with no clients lined up.