EUROCONTROL published their latest forecast for the European flight movements for 2021 – 2027. It foresees that recovery to 2019 traffic levels in Europe could occur as early as 2023, if not during summer 2022.
Provided this prediction is met or just nearly met, the Professional Staff Organisations (PSOs) expect that the travelling passenger will see delays exceeding the 2018/2019 levels, where record delays reached an average of 1,75 minutes per flight. In comparison, the EU wide target was 0,5 minutes per flight. Passengers’ experience over the European Network will be seriously degraded.
As the PSOs have highlighted several times, the focus of the Single European Sky (SES) has become based on a short-term vision: an overemphasis on short-term gains, especially on staffing costs, and gambling that technology and liberalisation will eventually solve all the problems and challenges of the future.
In addition, it chooses to sustain a financial mechanism that is wholly unfit for traffic fluctuations.
