Airspace Redesigns And Technology Ease European Air Traffic Congestion

With its fragmented airspace, Europe has struggled with air traffic management for decades, suffering from suboptimal organization and chronic congestion.

The European Union (EU) and Eurocontrol—an intergovernmental organization whose jurisdiction includes the EU plus countries such as Iceland and Turkey—have promoted airspace harmonization among member states. Progress has been gradual but real.

With air traffic expected to continue to grow in Europe, air navigation service providers (ANSP) are working to increase capacity while curbing that growth’s environmental impact. Improvements underway include free route airspace (FRA), trajectory-based operations (TBO), time-based separation and standardization of air traffic control (ATC) systems.

• Eurocontrol promotes cross-border airspace design changes
• Air navigation service providers form technology alliances
• First delivery of iTEC SkyNex system expected this year

Eurocontrol is pushing for more cross-border airspace design changes. National boundaries and different airspace structures have created fragmentation, but airspace should be designed around traffic flows and network performance, an agency spokesperson says.

That is what France’s government-owned Directorate of Air Navigation Services (DSNA) has done in its upper airspace. “In the northeast, near the borders with Germany, Luxembourg and Switzerland, we determined air traffic flows were located in a suboptimal way, so we redistributed responsibilities between ANSPs,” DSNA Director Frédéric Guignier says. “As a result, we added one route, thus increasing capacity.”

In May, the UK’s NATS started using the UK Airspace Design Service (UKADS), a regulatory framework focused on the London Terminal Control Area. Eleven major airports operate within a small and complex region in London and the southeast of England. The UKADS considers this specific airspace as a connected system.

The coordinated UKADS approach aims to develop designs for a single airspace change proposal to work more effectively across the wider London region, says NATS, a public-private partnership that is 48.9% owned by the UK government and 41.9% by airlines. The ANSP has implemented time-based separation at London Gatwick Airport, saving an estimated 11,000-19,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year and increasing capacity in inclement weather.

In strong headwinds, approaching aircraft fly more slowly over the ground, resulting in extra time between arrivals. Maintaining set separation distances in those conditions reduces the landing rate. With an Intelligent Approach tool that NATS developed with Leidos, the airport moved to time-based spacing that is dynamically calculated, as opposed to the distance interval. London Gatwick was the first single-runway airport in the world to adopt the method, NATS says.

FRA—designated airspace sectors where flight crews can fly their preferred routes between entry and exit points—is now the norm for upper flight levels in Europe. The DSNA has implemented FRA in all its upper airspace—above 30,500 ft.—since March. This means airlines can fly more directly across a seamless 2-million-km² (770,000-mi.²) area within the Functional Airspace Block Europe Central, the agency says.

NATS also implemented FRA across all of Scottish upper airspace above 25,500 ft. in March. It had already done so over west England in March 2023.

Meanwhile, the iTEC Alliance—comprising seven European ANSPs and Nav Canada, with Spain’s Indra as the principal technology supplier—is working toward air traffic management (ATM) standardization. The alliance members comprise Norway’s Avinor, Germany’s DFS, Spain’s Enaire, the Netherlands’ LVNL, NATS, Nav Canada, Lithuania’s Oro Navigacija and Poland’s PANSA.

The group coordinates with Coopans, a partnership among the ANSPs of Austria, Croatia, Denmark, Ireland, Portugal and Sweden, with Thales as an industry partner. Members of the groups share development costs instead of pursuing bespoke ATM platforms.

The iTEC Alliance is developing iTEC SkyNex, a new-generation ATM system. “It may equip 27 control centers, which are about to replace their legacy environments,” iTEC Director Marcel Bakker says. “Indra will deliver iTEC SkyNex’s first version late this year and the second version in 2028.”

The SkyNex system is an enabler for TBO, which allows controllers to plan further ahead and enables better integration of aircraft. In this framework, aircraft share their planned trajectories with ATC. Controllers could ask an aircraft to slow down early rather than letting it enter a sector and then asking the flight crew to fly a holding pattern. They can thus streamline traffic at the entire network level, Bakker says.

Indra’s iTEC SkyNex platform aims to integrate a more accurate flight data processing system and to exchange greater volumes of data. This will improve the controller’s working position with better ways of displaying information, Bakker says.

Decision-support tools should enable controllers to act before a trajectory conflict arises. “For example, the tool warns the controller about a conflict that may happen in 10 min.,” Bakker explains. “The controller asks whether a 10-deg. inflection of a trajectory can prevent the conflict. The tool answers ‘yes,’ and the controller then uplinks instructions to the aircraft.”

Because controllers are able to take action earlier, they can increase their sectors’ capacity and make smaller changes to flightpaths, Bakker says.