Single European Sky
The Single European Sky is an initiative to improve the way Europe’s airspace is managed.
Europe’s airspace is currently fragmented, divided along national borders. This can lead to duplication of effort and inefficiencies, with airspace users sometimes flying further than they need to, increasing fuel burn and CO2 emissions.
The Single European Sky initiative was set up to address these challenges, whilst reducing the cost of air traffic service provision and increasing Europe’s capacity to meet forecast growth in demand for air traffic.
The Single European Sky attempts to defragment Europe’s inter-connected airspace to increase capacity, reduce costs and improve safety and environmental performance.
NATS contributes to the Single European Sky in a number of ways:
- We are an active contributor to SESAR – the Single European Sky ATM Research programme – and are a member of both the SESAR Joint Undertaking and the SESAR Deployment Manager.
- We are a member of the UK-Ireland Functional Airspace Block (FAB), the first FAB to be established and operationally active when it launched in 2008. In its first four years of operation, the FAB delivered more than double the €12m enabled customer savings that it targeted when it was established.
- We are founding members of two of Europe’s leading Alliances committed to driving progress in support of the objectives of the Single European Sky – the A6 Alliance of Air Navigation Service Providers and the Borealis Alliance.
- We contribute to Europe-wide performance targets for air traffic management in the areas of safety, cost-efficiency, capacity and environmental performance, set as part of the regulatory framework of the Single European Sky. We have committed to a price reduction of c.20% in real terms by the end of RP2 (2019), whilst maintaining our excellent performance levels and delivering significant environmental savings. For details of our latest performance plan, which contributes to delivering the Single European Sky, please visit our page on the SES Regulatory Framework.
- We work closely with other ANSPs and Eurocontrol to ensure the wider European airspace network functions smoothly and efficiently and our Director of Operations, Strategy is Chair of the European Commission-mandated Network Management Board.
