Predicts Half Of All European Flights Will Face Delays,
Cancellations By 2030
By 2030, climate change and a lack of airport capacity will
mean that one flight in two will risk delays or cancellation at
highly-congested airports, according to a new EUROCONTROL
report.
The study, Challenges of Growth, finds that even taking the
economic downturn into account, demand for flights in Europe will
rise from 10 million today to 20.4 million in 2030. Airports are
working to make the most of their capacity and expand to meet
demand, but on current plans, they will only be able to handle 18.1
million of those flights, leaving 2.3 million flights a year or
6,300 flights a day unaccommodated.
As a result, EUROCONTROL maintains, airport congestion is set to
rise substantially -- by 2030, around 20 of the largest airports
will be saturated, that is operating at full capacity, for 8 hours
or more a day. About half of every day's flights will pass through
one of these saturated airports.
"Despite the economic downturn and a prospect of slower growth
in the future -- because of maturing European markets and higher
fuel-related costs -- demand in the longer term is still set to
rise substantially," said David Marsh, Manager of Forecasting and
Statistics at EUROCONTROL. "As a result, airports are going to run
out of space -- and with half of each day's flights going through
one of the saturated airports, a small delay at one airport could
rapidly escalate to infect the whole European air network."
The risk of delay will be higher too, because weather-related
delays are likely to be more common. Aviation has been working hard
to understand and reduce its impact on the environment. Now, for
the first time, EUROCONTROL is looking at the reverse effect: the
likely impact of climate change on air traffic. Bouts of extreme
weather will occur more frequently and probably be more severe,
bringing further disruption to already saturated airports. And as
higher temperatures become the norm across Europe, holiday patterns
are likely to change. While airlines will be able to change their
routes to cope with this, airports, which require substantial
infrastructure, are not so flexible.
"Prosperity in Europe relies on the smooth movement of people
and goods, and the air transport industry has a key role to play in
this. Whatever capacity can be delivered at airports, the outlook
is for a heavily-congested future. Thanks to climate change, demand
may be elsewhere than today. We need to start thinking of an agile
air transport network, one that brings together people and
technology so that it can react effectively both as the day's
events unfold and as demand changes by the year, unencumbered by
the twentieth-century concerns of national borders: a real Single
European Sky, an agile pan-European system, if we are to cope with
the challenges of the future," Marsh added.