Reading Henning’s article and with my up-close-and-intimate involvement in the SESAR definition phase (and the 20 or so years leading up to it) I could not escape a terrible feeling of déjà vu. This was only strengthened when I read the news about ANSP CEOs rumbling that the performance targets of the EU’s Single Sky Package were unrealistic and airlines rumbling that the costs arising from the proposed ADS-B implementing rule were placing an inordinate share on them compared to the burden to be borne by the ANSPs.
These are signs of a toxic mix well known from the past and they bode ill for ATM developments in Europe.
But there is more.
One of the airline associations is very vocal about the need to get financing support for the airlines as they consider the price of SESAR prohibitively expensive. This is all very well, but apparently little is being done to actually find and organize such financing.
IATA, the one organization that in the past successfully influenced ATM development directions by being present everywhere down to the working level, has now basically drawn back and seems to believe that things in the ATM world can be influenced equally successfully by simply issuing policies. This is a fallacy that will cost the airlines dearly. Policies are fine but in practice they are often ignored or interpreted in ways favorable to interests other than those of the airlines. By the time this is discovered, all kinds of binding agreements and decisions will have been made and airline protests will be met, in most cases, with a shrug. You missed the boat folks…
The involvement of airspace user experts in the work of SESAR is minimal. This has arisen from two causes. Following their intense presence during the SESAR definition phase, the airline experts concerned were reassigned to other jobs, the outside consultants (with a few exceptions) went on to work in new areas and the few people appointed by the airlines to work on SESAR have little or no knowledge of the discussions and directions forced by the industry during the definition phase, with the result that they now seem to be happy to accept things that could never have passed during those crucial definition years.
The other reason for the scarcity of airline input is the fact that, after the much heralded contract award from a year ago that claimed to bring airline expertise into SESAR, so far little has materialized. It is only now that the appointed airline experts (who have been idle for a full year of a two year contract) will, with a bit of luck, finally get nearer to the fire. With the first slate of SESAR deliverables coming up for review, this is much too late…
EUROCONTROL is reorganizing itself and sometimes one gets the feeling that they are preparing for departure from the ATM scene… They will have three pillars to look after; the tasks coming from the Single European Sky (SES), those from ATM Network Management and finally, yes you guessed it, the SJU. Nice, catchy names but they hide the fact that European ATM is placing all its eggs into a single basket, SESAR, something that is seen by many as basically a research project that is yet to prove itself as the savior of European ATM and not just a smokescreen that will only increase the power and influence of the service providers.
So why the déjà vu feeling?
Back in the years before SESAR, we had projects like EATCHIP that went on from version 1 to x, EATMS, ATM2000+ and so on. Looking back, it is easy to see that very little of the excellent ideas and aims in those projects were actually realized. We wouldn’t have needed SESAR if EATCHIP had been successful. But why did those projects deliver so little?
Some will say that it was EUROCONTROL’s ineptitude and lack of expertise that prevented European ATM from fulfilling the promise of EATCHIP and ATM2000+. This is not true at all. In fact, the ideas, concepts and even some of the solutions put forward in those projects were identical or very similar to what SESAR is advocating now. It was the member states that shot down or delayed almost all of the advanced elements, resisting change all the way until they had no other choice but to take tentative steps here and there. Things were not helped at all by a number of projects of doubtful value (think Mode S Enhanced Surveillance) that were pushed through and which gave the whole scene a bad taste for a long time to come.
Not that the airspace users did not contribute to the general malaise… Demanding improvements with a single voice and agreeing the solutions, then when the time came to invest, almost always they found some problem with the business case and they backed down. This was true in several cases even when the business case was rock solid, giving the lie to the claim that with a good business case airlines will happily invest.
The situation was amply illustrated by the words of an airline colleague of a major company (in the meantime merged with another carrier) who said frankly: ‘Steve give us a mandate and we will equip, otherwise business case or not, ATM investments will always be a low priority’. But even with mandates, most of the time equipage started late and the deadlines were regularly missed. I could count on one hand how many mandates stayed with the same dates as originally planned, with some having to be revised several times.
This does not mean that there was no progress. Far from it! Airline cash was used well locally and flashy new buildings with new ATC equipment and supporting infrastructure were deployed… What was missing was true European co-operation and as a result, the effectiveness of all those investments in the untouchable fragmented scene was horribly low.
It was to counter those parochial interests that the EC came up with the Single European Sky (SES) and the Functional Airspace Blocks (FAB) and finally SESAR. The delays and pitfalls being experienced in SES and the FABs speak volumes about how little those same parochial interest have been defeated… So, what can we expect in SESAR?
I am afraid that most elements of the toxic mix of the past are present again and it is not readily visible how they will be countered this time round.
Let’s see what the main problems seem to be:
• Fragmentation continues – The FAB’s may be the highest political priority of the European Commission, but with 11 FABs planned, most of them just bundling existing FIRs rather than rationalizing the totality of European airspace, fragmentation will continue to be an issue. Worse, the plans to organize flow management inside the FABs and have the CFMU act as a mere network manager is in fact taking Europe back to the 80s and we know what that means in terms of loss of efficiency. The difference? Once this new system is in place, there is no hope of going to a central flow management organization like we did in the 80s. A little discussed fact concerns the basic truth that the idea of FABs and the SESAR concept of operations is fundamentally incompatible. The SESAR ConOps was always meant to work in the true single European sky environment and not in an airspace ruled by 11 fiefdoms…
• Advanced ATM features are being pushed to the right – SESAR is now running on a 3 step schedule. Step 1, called “Time based operations”, is little more than business as usual, and even if one accepts that a transition period is needed to introduce new stuff, the Step 1 changes would have happened without SESAR (and possibly sooner since little has advanced in the past three years or so as everyone was waiting for SESAR to do it). Step 2 has some of the advanced features, including trajectory based operations, but it will only come in 2020! That is a nice, safe date and it shows clearly the success of those who would rather delay real change. Again, we do not need SESAR for this. Progress was successfully blocked or delayed in EATCHIP and ATM2000+ without the expense of SESAR…
• The airlines are reluctant to pay – The airspace users have been saying for a long time now that SESAR was going to be too expensive and that they would need to invest a lot up front for what are seen by many as uncertain benefits later. The business case for some elements is shaky at best and so far it was not possible to convince the community to pay for certain things even in the absence of a business case since by bundling such elements with the high benefit ones, the end result will be positive. The calls for public financing do sound reasonable but little is being done to achieve it and whether or not such financing will be possible is doubtful at best. The specter of mandates again?
• Insufficient airline involvement – The absence of airline experts with a thorough understanding of air traffic management and the history of SESAR on the working level results in two kinds of serious shortcomings. On the one hand, airlines are not able to influence developments and hence those developments will tend towards the interests of those players whose experts are involved. Conversely, airlines no longer have input from the ATM working level that would help them understand why certain things are the way they are. This knowledge is essential to make the right investment decisions and to accept certain less attractive options. No amount of high level policy making can replace this working level involvement.
• ANSP CEOs saying the SES goals are not realistic – Back in the times of EATCHIP and ATM2000+ there was no European Commission involvement on the level of the Single European Sky (SES) and hence the battles for more efficiency and lower costs tended to be fought on less publicly visible battle-fronts. But the demands were very similar as was the response (can’t do it…). This was the case even while the basis for the demands was agreement on the highest level (ATM2000+ was signed by the European Ministers of Transport).
You do not have to be a doomsday prophet to recognize that many of the things that in the past resulted in promising projects failing miserably, and European ATM ending up in the sad state it is in, were present when SESAR started and are present again to-day.
The cardinal question is: are there mitigating circumstances this time around?
During the SESAR definition phase there was a lot of hype about a so called Performance Partnership between ANSPs and the airspace users. This ill-defined “thing” was seen as the heralding angel of a new and brave world where true service seller and service buyer relationships would rule the day, where things were to be decided taking the common good into account. To-day’s reality is a scene with minimal airline influence and almost total ANSP control over SESAR. With advanced features from the Concept of Operations having been pushed safely out of the way (2020 as a target date is equal to basically never), it is difficult to see how the problems of old will be avoided in this latest effort to get European ATM into decent shape.
It is only a matter of time before the airspace users wake up to the full reality of what has been done to the Concept of Operations and that their money will buy only very limited benefits if anything at all, with the real improvements pushed beyond the horizon… as had been done so many times in the past.
They will no doubt complain bitterly… and face a shrug: you have missed the boat folks.
Déjà vu.
