This month, the European Union (E.U.) begins technical development for its long-anticipated Single European Sky (SES) air traffic management plan and ATC modernization.

The instrument through which the E.U. and Eurocontrol will develop and demonstrate the technology that will make SES possible is "SESAR," or Single European Sky-ATM Research, which began its definition phase in 2004. The SES endeavor is particularly notable from the western side of the Atlantic not just because of its ambitious technical goals but from the singular achievement of convincing 27 constituent nations plus 11 non-E.U. neighbors to agree to stitch their sovereign airspace into a seamless blanket over the Continent and standardize their ATC systems. As one European Parliament member put it, "By 2012, we will have a Schengen of the sky," a reference to the treaty signed in the town of Schengen, Luxembourg, in 1985 that created the E.U.

Up until now, E.U. member countries may have shared open borders and, excepting the United Kingdom, a common currency, but their ATC systems were nationally unique. Even though pan-European air transit has been coordinated by Eurocontrol since 1963, the fragmented collection of dissimilar ATM systems requires users - airlines and business aviation operators alike - to navigate through 27 different national airspace regimes, each controlled by a unique air navigation service provider (ANSP) operating according to its own rules and often with exclusive, aging equipment. Consequently, flying direct is rarely possible, and the divergent routings are the antithesis of efficiency. It is as if each of the 48 contiguous American states operated its own ATC system, and the FAA had to coordinate the activities of 48 separate ANSPs just to get an aircraft across the country.

All this is scheduled to change beginning in three years when E.U. members are obligated to establish cross-border ATM cooperation, yielding local authority to the nascent European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). (Just giving up authority to EASA represents a major concession from member states, given the fierce nationalism that has characterized Europe for the last two millennia.) This will come about through the auspices of the SESAR "Joint Undertaking" (SJU), the cooperative initiative created by the European Parliament in 2007, with Eurocontrol as a founding partner, to manage the SESAR technological development phase.

Stakeholders began talking about an integrated pan-European ATM system as early as 2000 in anticipation of predicted airline and business aviation growth on the Continent and the perceived need to address more efficient operations and reduction of aircraft engine emissions. The concept was formalized in 2004 when the European Parliament adopted a series of regulations intended to reform the existing mishmash of ANSP-operated ATC systems into the illustratively christened Single European Sky. The definition phase of SES began, but as U.S. readers can appreciate from the 25-year hiatus in FAA ATC modernization, reality intervened and competing interests dominated the process.

The debate of how to facilitate the immense job of darning 27 disparate airspace systems together, while accommodating the operational and training needs of the armed forces and - probably most important - developing funding mechanisms to pay the colossal cost of underwriting the venture, went on for four years. Then, in June 2008, the European Commission (the E.U.'s executive branch, which sets the confederation's annual agendas) proposed a second legislative package to break a virtual deadlock among member states over how European airspace would be integrated. The package, dubbed Single European Sky II, was passed on Feb. 23 this year by the Parliament after E.U. transport ministers came to agreement. It consists of two regulations that, according to the E.U. press office, are "aimed at improving the performance of the European aviation system in key areas such as safety, capacity, flight, cost efficiency and environmental sustainability by coordinating and supervising member states' air traffic control systems and implementing common rules and performance targets."

The heart of the proposed system is "functional air blocks" (FABs) claimed to promote more direct routings than today's procedure, where international flights must transit national ATC zones as they are passed from one state authority to another, leading to bottlenecks, delays and unnecessary fuel consumption. Thus, FABs are expected to allow shorter flight times, saving fuel and commensurately reducing CO2 emissions. (The E.U. is even speculating that air fares will be reduced, as well, since air carrier overheads should come down - the active words here are "speculating" and "should.") Projected financial savings among system users are estimated to be as much as €2 billion annually. So far, nine FABs have been designed, including an integrated U.K./Ireland zone scheduled to come on line first as a demonstration project.

Meanwhile, a "declaration of intent" signed by representatives of six countries at the European Civil Aviation Summit in November 2008 will create a Central European FAB encompassing an area where currently 55 percent of flights converge, or as the former French E.U. Presidency described it, "the most-complex traffic areas between the busiest airports." (The Summit, which united national aviation officials and industry stakeholders, was convened to develop strategies to mitigate environmental impact in the congested Central European region. It produced agreements for a Clean Sky Joint Technological Initiative and weighed - but did not act upon - the controversial E.U. Environmental Trading Scheme [ETS] carbon cap-and-trade proposal, which Business &Commercial Aviation spotlighted in the October 2008 issue ["European Ops: Get Ready to Cap and Trade," page 90].)

SESAR is basically a technological development scheme organized into three distinct phases:

Definition (2005-2008). As already described, this was hashed out by a "representative group" of European ATM stakeholders, including Eurocontrol, and determined actions necessary to achieve SESAR goals from research to implementation.