13.07.18

EU DOCUMENT ON FLIGHT DELAYS IN THE EUROPEAN SKIES

Concerns about the continuous delays in air transport in the continental skies, expressed in June by Assaeroporti representing all of national airports and the subject of a note released in recent days by SACBO, in relation to the situation that weighs on Milan Airport Bergamo as a result of strikes and contingencies of various kinds with scattered origins, were taken over by the European Commission for Transport and Tourism of the European Parliament, chaired by Karima Delli, and by the EU Commissioner for Transport, Violeta Bulc.

In a joint document, the two EU institutions highlight how the current system is unable to manage the ever increasing volume of air traffic and the need to update the planning and control mechanisms under Eurocontrol.
With 11 million scheduled flights - according to the note by the European Commissioner for Transport and the European Parliament's Committee on Transport - it is predicted that 2018 will be the year with the highest air traffic ever. The problem of delays, which involves about 50 thousand passengers every day in airports all over Europe, with an average shift of two hours of flight departure, is destined to intensify with the peaks expected in the summer vacation weeks, if no solutions are introduced effective measures to ensure return to acceptable levels of punctuality. To the inconvenience and additional costs due to delays at the expense of passengers and airlines, heavy operating losses are added to the airports.

The EU transport institutions call on national air navigation service providers to work with Eurocontrol to rapidly get more effective management of the European air transport network.
A position that confirms how it has grounded what expressed by SACBO since the first signs of a problem that has progressively widened and ended up inevitably incumbent on the airports with the highest concentration of traffic on European routes, providing a distorted image of flights scheduled at night. Image that is the direct consequence of the above reasons, on which SACBO has no responsibility or possibility of intervention, like other European airports.