Thursday, December 9th, 2021
Planning too tightly calculated?
Air traffic controllers warn of late summer
Estimates of when air traffic will have recovered from the corona shock differ. The air navigation service providers do not expect this until mid-2024. The pilots union TUEM vehemently contradicts and warns: There could be massive problems in the coming summer.
The pilot union TUEM has warned of a possible delay chaos in European airspace. In the coming summer it could come to conditions like in the “delayed summer 2018”, criticized TUEM boss Stefan Pille. The reason for this is that the flight security providers are planning too cautiously. “The current traffic planning scenarios for European airspace are calculated far too tightly and fall well short of the expectations of many travel providers and airlines.”
If the predictions of the organizers and airlines come true, the European air traffic control authorities are not adequately prepared, warned the unionist. “The consequences would be massive delays during the main travel season, stranded travelers across Europe and a stalling of the much-needed economic recovery.”
The question of how quickly European air traffic will recover from the corona shock is particularly controversial. Pille refers to an estimate by the air traffic control organization Eurocontrol, according to which there could be as many flight movements as before the crisis by early 2023. However, the air navigation service providers based themselves on a conservatively calculated scenario that does not expect a recovery before mid-2024.
There are also special problems at the Maastricht control center, which also covers larger parts of Germany’s upper airspace. Due to a system change in the neighboring French airspace, additional air traffic is to be expected there, which has not yet been taken into account in the planning. The Trade Union Eurocontrol Maastricht (TUEM) represents the pilots in Maastricht.