Planning the Future of Flying with Sesar

The holiday season is upon us and millions of us will be packing our cases for a couple of weeks of sun and fun in Europe. This is something we take for granted at the minute, but something that is becoming increasingly difficult for the air traffic management services to deal with. The reason is reason, more passenger means more planes, and more flights have lead to an increasing overcrowded airspace over Europe.

There are 1.4bn passengers flying across Europe from and to 444 airports, and the number is increasing by 5% a year. If that rate of growth continues for the next 20 years there will be more flights than people living in Beijing, a staggering 16.9m. The old air traffic management systems will have no chance of coping under this pressure, so the future was looking bleak, until Sesar came along.

A joint initiative between the European Commission, Euro central and the entire aviation industry, Sesar has been hailed as the saviour of flying in Europe, and that is no great exaggeration. To be able to continue to have our holidays in the sun, the aims that Sesar have laid out are more essential than wishful.

They intend to get the available airspace over Europe increased threefold, and to replace the present archaic air traffic management system with one with the most up to date technology. Another main objective is to greatly improve safety for passengers and to further reduce by the effect on the environment by 10%. If we are still enjoying our holidays in 15-20 years time, we will have the 110 partners of Sesar to thank for it.