And ATM2000+? You will be forgiven if you do not. After all, we live in the age of SESAR and the FAB… There is a whole new generation of experts laboring on the “things” these new acronyms signify and without a doubt they believe in what they are doing. As they should indeed. But may be, just may be, it is a worthwhile exercise to remind them (and ourselves) what EATCHIP was all about.
The acronym stands for European ATC Harmonization and Implementation Program. It was an ambitious initiative to improve air traffic management in Europe. As tangible results kept slipping ever farther into the future, EATCHIP II and then III were born, all characterized by endless meetings, promises and a lack of action on the part of most of the stakeholders. Clearly, something was very wrong though this was not said in so many words… But in time ATM2000+ was launched which was a new take on the old subject of ATM improvements. The agreements to make ATM2000+ reality were signed on the highest level. More working groups, more meetings while obfuscation and dodging of the issues continued. I remember well how some EUROCONTROL experts were pulling their hair out when for the nth time something that was the perfectly logical next step was once again blocked by one or the other of the stakeholders. Sometimes it was a ground service provider, some times the airlines, but the end result was the same: delay in the program and delays at the airports.
My favorite story of the time concerns the ECIP, the European Convergence and Implementation Plan (the forerunner of the ESSIP) which contained the implementation objectives and the deadlines for implementation. One would think that the date against an ECIP objective was to be taken seriously and a State failing to achieve the objective would come under enormous peer pressure… No way! I sat through many a frustrating meeting which did little else than change the dates of the ECIP objectives… always to a later date! It was enough for one or the other of the big States to announce that they would not meet the originally stipulated date and it was changed immediately. The result? The program was always on time and nobody ever missed a deadline. Cute and very impressive in political statements. This did not help aircraft stranded on the ground but looked very nice in reports and ministerial presentations.
Of course not everybody was blind to what was going on and in time the European Commission decided that enough was enough and they came up with the concept of the Functional Airspace Blocks (FAB) and the Single European Sky (SES). Looking at the aims of the FABs and SES, it is clear that they are not actually building on the results of EATCHIP x and ATM2000+ but are in fact representing a whole new start…
There are however some important differences, often overlookd. While EATCHIP and ATM2000+ concerned all the ECAC (European Civil Aviation Conference) member States, SES is the European Union while inside it, the FABs are just a group of States brought together on… well, ATM considerations with a healthy dose of politics also.
Mind you, air traffic management is not the only field where politics needlessly meddle. The top management of Airbus is based on a system of agreed rotation… right now a very successful top boss will need to step down because the time has come for a nationality change… but I diverge.
Getting States to embrace the FAB concept was not easy. It took years of effort before things finally started moving and when they did, it was soon clear that State groupings in the various FABs (of which there are far too many anyway) were in fact starting to build their own little castles, raising the specter of new fragmentation albeit on a larger scale… SES notwithstanding.
Now we read in CANSO’s communication that the Directors of the National Supervisory Authorities for Civil Aviation (NSA) from Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland signed a Memorandum of Cooperation. This memorandum is a commitment for a close cooperation in order to achieve an efficient and effective oversight of the FABEC air navigation service providers. The six NSA will cooperate closely in particular on common implementation projects or cross-border airspace design and airspace use. They will also assess the overall FABEC Safety Case to be provided to the European Commission by June 2012. The document covers all the domain of oversight of the NSAs, including auditing of the service providers, licensing of air traffic controllers, the establishment of a FABEC performance management system in accordance with the future FABEC governance, and the harmonisation of oversight processes and methods. This signing of this agreement is a further step in strengthening the cooperation between the six FABEC States, coming immediately after the signing of the FABEC Treaty on 2 December 2010 by the Ministries of Transport and Defence.
This piece of news is about oversight by the NSAs but is revealing nevertheless also in a wider context.
The original lofty ideas of harmonizing all of Europe have now basically shrunk to what is inside a given FAB… Harmonizing the FABs themselves is a task unto itself and SES, even with its implementation rules, will have its work cut out for it if it is to succeed.
But if we consider that the EC will be getting the FABEC safety case only in 2012 as mentioned in the report, one can only wonder… what harmonization has been achieved under EATCHIP x or ATM2000+? Were they indeed more or less total failures?
Make no mistake, it was not EUROCONTROL that was not up to the task of realizing EATCHIP… I know it is a popular theme, EUROCONTROL bashing, but they are not to blame. It were the member States that kept things from happening most of the time.
So my young friends working in SESAR and the FABs, stop for a moment and ask yourselves: what has changed since ATM2000+? Most of the players are the same… most of the political influences are the same (just look at the delays encountered by the FAB implementation). It is still true that technology alone will not save ATM… and SESAR is not the magic bullet either as some would have us believe. So, are we on yet another up-cycle in European ATM projects with the old problems still very much present or are we on a steady course now being kept in balance by the hard earned intelligence from programs that have gone before?
Are the FABs truly the future or are they just a sad excuse for not being able to do something on a truly European level? Before answering keep in mind that EATCHIP and ATM2000+ rose and went down in flames without anyone ever admitting that there was a problem.
Are we in better shape to-day?
Writing as one who liverd through EATCHIP and ATM2000+, I congratulate you, Steve, on a nice summary! I hope that the younger generation heed your warnings.
I wouldlike to clarify one point, though. For too long the European Commission has laid claim to the “Single European Sky”, even attributing it to Ms Loyola de Palacio in particular. I accept that it’s true that they did kick off the SES initiative, but the ideas and the name came from EUROCONTROL. I was there, in the EUROCONTROL reception area, when the then DG presented a souvenir to the contractor who had suggested the name “Single European Sky”. It was the winning entry in a competition to choose a name for the new concept.
Steve,
I also lived through EATCHIP and ATM2000+, working at that time on behalf of IATA. The stated objectives and strategies of both these major programmes were excellent. Had they been achieved in full we would have a much better European ATM system than we do now. It grieved me then to see how many opportunities were wasted because states and organisations would not agree to implemment the necessary changes both completely and on time.
It grieved me again later, when I chaired Eurocontrol’s Performance Review Commission, to find that the two bench marking studies we completed, comparing the efficiency of ATM in the USA and continental Europe, showed conclusively that ATM productivity in the USA was twice as efficient as in Europe. The reason? Nothing more than the efficiences and economies of scale to be derived from doing it the same way and from reducing the multiple layers of organisational complexity in Europe.
Alex is right when he says that Eurocontrol invented the concept of the Single European Sky. The problem was that the member states refused to give it the legislative ability to achieve it. I sincerely hope that the European Commission can delver this legislative muscle and use it wisely.
Europe cannot afford to continue to waste money through organisational inefficiency.