Air navigation service in Europe is more fragmented than in the United States, with comparable levels of flight inefficiency for aircraft in the en route phase of flight, according to a comparative study developed by Eurocontrol and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).1
The study, Comparison of Air Traffic Management–Related Operational Performance: U.S/Europe, concluded that the two systems differ primarily in the way that they use traffic management initiatives (TMIs) — air traffic control techniques of managing changes in traffic demands such as planned en route holds and sequencing programs designed to establish a specific interval between aircraft.
The report, which was released in March, was the sixth in a series of joint air traffic management (ATM) comparisons of operational performance in the United States and the European Union. The comparisons were based on an analysis of key performance indicators that have been agreed to by bot…
