How Europe’s Air Navigation Service Providers are preparing for summer traffic

CANSO’s European Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) are preparing for very high levels of traffic over the coming months.

As the summer travel season begins, ANSPs across Europe are preparing to safely and efficiently guide air traffic through skies that will be busier than any time since the pandemic. Controllers are expecting to handle 5 per cent more traffic than summer 2024, yet since 2022 available airspace is 20 per cent smaller due to the impact of the Ukraine war on traffic flows. With thunderstorm activity last summer being the top cause of delay across Europe, adverse weather is again expected to present an additional challenge.

In order to tackle these issues and minimise delay, CANSO Europe’s ANSP members have put in place a variety of measures including:

• Optimisation of sectors[1], both horizontally and vertically, including implementation of new flight levels to enable more capacity, more flexibility to manage bad weather and more solutions to manage intruders
• Improved rostering through agreements with unions to allow for more flexibility in working arrangements of air traffic control officers (ATCOs) that will improve sector capacity
• Adverse weather management procedures, including recruitment of meteorological experts to work alongside operational staff, providing them with real time or more frequent in-house sectoral weather forecasts
• Enhanced collaboration with all the key players in aviation which focuses on considering the impact of local decisions on the network as a whole, as outlined in the EUROCONTROL #thinkNetwork campaign. The campaign promotes measures such as pilots flying their filed flight plan; ATCOs sticking to the flight plan’s vertical and lateral profile (unless there is a weather, safety or technical reason); and airports keeping the network informed of any issue that might trigger delay.

“ANSPs across Europe are working tirelessly to ensure safe and efficient operations and optimal use of restricted airspace during what will undoubtedly be a busy summer for aviation,” said Simon Hocquard, CANSO Director General. “We call on all our operational partners to fulfil the expectations of the EUROCONTROL #thinkNetwok campaign so that we can all keep delays to a minimum for passengers.”

Looking further ahead towards long-term traffic growth, ANSPs have launched recruitment campaigns to secure more ATCOs for the years to come and have initiated digitalisation projects to improve airspace capacity and efficiency. CANSO is supporting this work with its own recruitment campaign Guardians of the Skies to encourage the next generation of air traffic controllers.