EU Moves Toward Unifying Airspace
Seven European countries signed an agreement on Thursday to unify their national airspaces into a Single European Sky, in an effort to economize costs, streamline operations and increase air traffic efficiency. The seven countries include five EU members, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Slovenia, and two non-members, Croatia and Bosnia.
Currently, each European country has their own air space, which makes coordination difficult, especially in emergencies. This became increasingly evident during last year’s volcanic ash cloud incident that grounded thousands of flights and stranded travelers throughout Europe. Under the Single European Sky initiative, member EU nations would create nine common geographical airspace spaces called the Functional Airspace Blocks (FABs) by 2012. According to Aviation Week, the FABs are expected to improve current safety standards, enable planes to take much shorter routes and as a result will reduce aviation's impact on the environment, minimize delays, lower costs for companies and finally make flights cheaper for passengers.
Source: Aviation Week, Airwise