Aircraft

Often cited as offering a quick win to detract from a lack of breakthroughs in the hardware department, the pace of efforts to improve air traffic management is also coming under increasing political scrutiny.

International Air Transport Association director general Giovanni Bisignani recently repeated his appeal to the world's governments and air navigation service providers to eliminate the 12% inefficiency in global air traffic management.

"Halve air traffic inefficiency by 2012 and we immediately save 35 million tonnes of CO2. Three mega-projects could deliver real results: a Single Sky for Europe, an efficient Pearl River Delta in China and a next-generation air traffic system in the USA," he said.

Bisignani called on German chancellor Angela Merkel, as host of the recent G8 summit, to step up the pace to reduce aircraft emissions over Europe within five years.

"Governments are dragging their feet. The Single European Sky could deliver a 12 million tonne reduction in CO2. But it has been a 15-year European circus of talks, talks and more talks - with no results. This is inconsistent and irresponsible," he said.

Emissions expert David Lister agrees that progress has been slower than forecast, citing the 1999 report that pegged improvements here and other operational procedures as providing a potential 18% reduction in aviation emissions by 2018.

"Current data to hand would indicate a significantly slower rate of improvement," he says.

Unified European airspace means creating a mechanism that unites Europe's 35 air navigation service providers into one. It sounds simple, but is complicated by the challenges of blending operational objectives with political nation state reality.

Most state-run air navigation services are shored up by massive union power, with politicians still failing to grasp the not-so-subtle difference between retaining sovereignty of their respective skies and providing air traffic management services over their bit of it.