European Commission invests €600 million in new research to unblock congestion in Europe's airspace

The European Commission has today announced €600 million of new funding to unblock congestion in Europe’s airspace. The Commission is looking to head off a capacity crunch as the number of flights is forecast to increase by 50% over the next 10-20 years. The goal is to develop the new technology needed to deliver Europe’s Single Sky – the ambitious project to reform Europe’s airspace, doubling capacity and halving air traffic management costs.

EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas said, “Europe’s skies and airports risk saturation. If we leave things as they are, we will be confronted with heavy congestion and chaos in our airspace. On the ground, airports will be so crowded that there will be 2 million flights unable to take off or land. Increased congestion brings with it increased safety risk- as well as delays and real economic costs. This vital research funding holds the keys to unlocking the technology needed to deliver a cleaner, more efficient, European airspace fit for the 21st century.”

Inefficiencies in Europe’s fragmented airspace bring extra costs of close to 5 billion Euros each year to airlines and their customers. They add 42 kilometres to the distance of an average flight forcing aircraft to burn more fuel, generate more emissions, pay more in costly user charges and suffer greater delays. The United States controls the same amount of airspace, with more traffic, at almost half the cost.

This research is critical to delivering the Single European Sky, the flagship project to create a single European airspace – tripling capacity and halving air traffic costs. It will continue to be managed by the Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research (SESAR) Joint Undertaking (JU) – whose mandate will be prolonged for a further 8 years, until 2024.

The research aims to make flying cleaner, cheaper and safer. The new funding will focus on

developing means to allow airlines to fly their preferred (and more direct) routes, using new technologies for data exchange between air and ground;
integrating new types of aircraft, such as drones, in the air traffic management system;
optimising traffic management, in particular on the ground; for example to make the access to and exit from the runways more efficient and safer in all weather conditions.
The project involves more than 2500 experts covering the full range of air traffic management (ATM) expertise. Their work on coordinated ATM related research will continue, as well as development and validation activities, including large scale demonstrations.

The extension of the SESAR JU shows the Commission’s strong commitment to the Single European Sky project (see IP 13/523) and recognises the importance of the results that the SESAR JU has already achieved to date.

The SESAR JU will continue to be co-financed by Eurocontrol and the aviation industry. The EU’s share of the funding for the extension, amounting to a maximum of 600 million Euros, will come from the Horizon 2020 programme, as part of the EU’s new Multi-Annual Financial Framework. This is part of an estimated total budget covering the new work programme of the extended SESAR JU of €1.6 billion. Indicatively, this budget will support ATM exploratory research (6%), applied research (47%), pre-industrial development (28%) and large scale demonstration projects (9%).