EU policymakers learn about air traffic management industry ambitions during skeyes visit

Created on 01.08.2022 11:39

This summer, Europe’s Air Navigation Services Providers are addressing the challenge of managing growing traffic levels as passengers return to flying again. It was therefore timely for Members of the European Parliament’s Transport Committee and national Aviation Attachés to the EU to visit the Belgian air traffic control centre of skeyes at Brussels Airport to see how air traffic management works in practice.

The visitors were invited as guests of skeyes, the Belgian ANSP, and the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation, which represents 35 European ANSPs. Every day on average skeyes controls 650 movements at Brussels Airport and 1,630 flights across the whole of Belgium (figures before COVID). The skeyes air traffic control centre is therefore an ideal facility to demonstrate the complexity of ATM in Europe.

The visitors were given a tour of the air traffic control tower, the joint civil-military air traffic control centre (CANAC 2) and the skeyes training facility. As well as witnessing an ANSP’s operations at first hand, they learned about European ATM industry’s future ambitions, such as the completion of the Single European Sky, the transition to more digitalised and automated ways of working, the provision of more environmentally optimised routing and the facilitation of the nascent market for drone flights (U-Space).

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