Industry representatives, regulators and analysts all predict that the most important result of the post-mortem meetings starting this week will be a move toward a unified airspace at the expense of nations still seeking to jealously guard the sky as a symbol of national sovereignty.
Unified airspace would also put the skis under one regional regulatory body instead of leaving decisions to individual countries — one of the key sources of confusion in the volcanic ash crisis.
The Montreal-based International Air Transport Association has enthusiastically endorsed calls for streamlining Europe’s air space, with the introduction of the so-called Single European Sky concept that would turn it into a seamless system such as the one in the United States.
“The volcanic ash crisis that paralyzed European air transport for nearly a week made it crystal clear that the Single European Sky is a critical missing link in Europe’s infrastructure,” said IATA Director General Giovanni Bisignani.
It reinforced the argument of the European Commission which wants to speed up the plan to unify control over all European skyways, since the absence of a single European air traffic regulator made it tough to deal with the crisis.
The disruptions caused by the blanket closure of airspace over Europe as high-altitude winds carried ash from a volcano in southern Iceland, have sparked accusations that national regulators had massively overreacted.
