Single European Sky

In the present European aviation landscape, each of the continent’s nation states has its own provider of air navigation services, which is charged, with its own peculiarities, with meeting that country’s specific air traffic management needs. The European Commission’s "Single European Sky" (SES) programme is intended to consolidate and harmonise this currently-fragmented European air traffic management system, and thereby enhance the efficiency of the system as a whole.

Europe’s air navigation service providers are constantly striving to further improve their overall performance. To do so, however, they need to ensure that the continent’s air traffic can be handled in airspace areas which are larger and more homogenous than those which exist today. This is why Europe’s airspace needs to be organised not in accordance with political dictates but in terms of its users’ needs. The strict division between civilian and military airspace also needs to be dropped.

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With its extensive experience in cross-border air traffic – 45 per cent of the air traffic handled by skyguide is actually managed in airspace beyond Switzerland’s borders –, in managing complex airspace areas and in integrating civil and military air navigation services, skyguide is a leading European air navigation service provider which is excellently equipped to embrace current developments and meet and master the challenges they will bring.

Skyguide has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Single European Sky concept right from the outset. The SES programme is intended to promote and encourage collaboration between Europe’s various air navigation service providers to create functional airspace blocks or FABs – airspace areas that are based on operational criteria and are coherently and logically aligned to actual traffic flows. SES will also mean an end to the present distinction between civil and military airspace. The SES implementation programme is SESAR (Single European Sky ATM Research).

SES certification to play a major role
In December 2006, skyguide was awarded its SES certification – confirmation of its compliance with the high operating and procedural standards required, and an essential qualification for any provider which wishes to continue to offer its air traffic services in the future SES world.

Further information