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“Brussels is trying yet again to create a common sky over Europe,” writes the conservative daily. European Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas will warn the 27 member states on June 11 that he may start formal legal proceedings over their failure to replace existing airspace regions, which are divided up along national boundaries, with a smaller number of large merged areas, known as “functional air space blocs”.
The plan is part of the Single European Sky (SES) project, which aims to overhaul air traffic control systems throughout Europe. Rzeczpospolita notes that –
Currently the EU sky is controlled by 27 national watchdogs which supervise 60 air traffic control centres. A similar airspace over the US, with approximately the same number of flights and airports, is controlled by a single centre. Sky monitoring [in the US] costs half as much as in Europe […] Every year the European economy loses €5bn because of poor air space management.
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