When I read about the Paris-Toulouse flight conducted by Air France to show how much CO2 emission they can save by optimized air traffic management including continuous descent approaches, my immediate reaction was not happiness about saving the planet. No sir, my reaction was: here is the best source of funds to pay ATM developments with, including aircraft equipment.
For decades, airlines were (and still are by the way) obliged to fly uneconomical routes, circumnavigate military areas, stay on sub-optimal levels because of outdated letters of agreements between control centers, fly obsolete departure routes… the list is endless. Politicians have paid lip service to wanting to improve ATM but did little to actually implement really effective improvements. Just look at EATCHIP, ATM2000+ and the political statements associated with them and compare to what had actually been done. Hell, the first wave of SESAR “improvements” are little more than what should have been accomplished by ATM2000+ years ago.
By inaction and omission, European States have caused billions of extra costs to the airlines and by proxy to their customers, the passengers. If anyone had any doubts that it could have been done much better, just look at the improvements that are suddenly appearing in air traffic management, driven by environmental considerations but still using much the same ATC equipment that was there also 10 years ago!
The difference? Environmental issues are on the election agenda, airlines’ operational efficiency is not. IATA has said many times that the aviation industry could be made much greener by just better ATM but nobody wanted to listen. Now that the environmental ticket is starting to bite, State monopoly ANSPs are suddenly “discovering” that they can do much better.
They could have started doing much better years ago. States just did not care.
If you cause damage to someone, you must make amends. I think a few clever lawyers should really try to recover from the States at least a part of the unnecessary costs the airlines were made to make by the unnecessarily inefficient air traffic management system. A few hundreds of millions would pay for a lot of aircraft equipment that would jump-start SESAR fore sure…