One of the many yardsticks you can use to measure the passage of time is the frequency you encounter air traffic management experts who stare at you as if you were from the moon when you mention EATCHIP or ATM2000+. Yes, there is a whole new generation of experts working at the air navigation service providers (ANSP) who have never, or hardly ever, heard of those flagship projects which were supposed to save European ATM in the 80s and 90s.
Then there are ANSP managers, who pretend that they have never heard of them. They are the ones who whine and cry saying that the targets being set by the European Commission as part of the Single European Sky (SES) legislation are too ambitious and they cannot be achieved in the short time available.
These managers act as if they had to start from scratch. As if the initial aims of SES were not in fact just an incremental improvement over what the ANSPs have, supposedly, already achieved as part of the ATM2000+ project. At least I cannot recall any of them having said that ATM2000+ was a failure and that they had done mighty little.
ATM2000+ was a failure of course simply because no agreement could be reached on anything while each ANSP was busy protecting their turf…
The EC was triggered to intervene by this exact failure. They let loose the FAB concept and SES I and when both faltered, SES II. The longer term future was to be assured by SESAR.
With all this heavy artillery you would think European ATM was finally home free. No way!
The productivity of European air traffic management continues to be below par. While I was still with IATA, we have often delivered this unwelcome message and boy, how they hated to hear this. But nothing seems to have changed. User charges in Europe generate a cool 8 billion Euros per year but in the US, for about the same cost, they handle twice the amount of traffic. Way to go ladies and gentlemen!
The EC is getting restless again… They have threatened to unleash an SES III package (read stricter requirements and punishments) if the member states continue to balk at delivering the prescribed improvements.
I have written about the sad state of the FABs before but here we are, things not getting anywhere and that is no big surprise since the FAB folks have spent the last several years putting together their institutional arrangements with little or no attention to operational improvements.
SESAR is plodding along and they claim successful bits and pieces but they are not into implementation yet. As we all know, it is at implementation time that the kerosene usually hits the fan…
The optimists say things are moving, but more slowly than originally hoped. Well, I can translate that sentence for the new generation because we have heard it before.
Listen carefully: EATCHIP was invented to speed up ATM development; ATM2000+ was created to speed up EATCHIP; FAB/SES/SESAR was created to speed up ATM2000+…
Suggestions anyone for the name of the next project to speed up FAB/SES/SESAR?