Aviation Week and Space Technology, in their August 3 issue’s Market Focus commentary painted a very bleak picture of the US and European aerospace industry’s future. Referring to developments in China, they postulated that the 2010s may well be the last decade of US and European pre-eminence in the sector. This came on top of TIME magazines July 20 cover story “Generation Disappointment” by-lined: “Badly paid, unemployed and going nowhere. Why young Europe has so little to smile about.”
Only one of the stories is specifically about aviation but when a major magazine writes about “the broken hopes of a generation”, we should listen.
Air traffic management is not isolated from the troubles of the aerospace industry nor from the qualities, motivation and attitudes of the young people who will be entering the job market in coming years, some of whom might chose aviation and ATM in particular as the place to be.
Will they come because of the prospects and cutting edge nature of ATM or just because there is little else? Are we doing enough to make sure the reason is the former?
Like in all fields of aviation, safety is paramount also in ATM. For this reason, progress is always evolutionary rather then revolutionary. Unfortunately, every so often we see the safety argument being used to prevent change from happening and the reasons are many, all too often nothing more exotic than parochial interests clashing. Safety is seemingly not affected so such events are allowed to pass. In reality, needed change left undone does and did lead to accidents…
New technology that could prevent serious incidents is slow to penetrate the industry because making the business case is so damn difficult.
Political meddling seems to be a favourable game States like to play and the suffering of projects like Galileo and Airbus show clearly how unwise it is to allow such meddling to get the upper hand. Closer to home, implementation of the Single European Sky (SES) and the Functional Airspace Blocks (FAB) are behind schedule not because they needed fancy rocket science to get off the ground… Even the dance around the CFMU’s future looks more like a series of “smash and grab” attempts (as the CFMU director so aptly put it in his comment on one of this blog’s posts) than considered system building for the future.
How do young people see the air traffic management world? How do they see the future of air traffic controllers? How do they see the work of the IT specialists who will be supporting the many new systems and services?
Do they see a world that is calcified, basing itself on proven technology and procedures with little willingness to move forward? Or do they see an exciting world that delivers safety while also being at the cutting edge of technology?
Do they see a world where the air traffic control part of ATM finally make the same culture transition and paradigm changes that has revolutionised the cockpit more than a decade ago?
The answers to those questions are vital for the future of air traffic management. High salaries alone are not enough to attract the best young talent. The opportunity to work at the cutting edge, whether while controlling aircraft or building the tools for those who do, is what can become the irresistible force to bring us the best and the brightest.
An air traffic management environment that fits perfectly with the extremely competitive business of operating aircraft, one that provides a seamless service that is safe, economical and free of political interference… that is the kind of place future generations will want to work in.
If we can achieve such an environment, European leadership in the practice of air traffic management will be recovered, irrespective of what may happen in other sectors of the aerospace industry… or other industries for that matter.