Presentation of the Single European Sky certificate to the Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre
Toespraak | 17-11-2006 | Maastricht | Karla Peijs, minister van Verkeer en Waterstaat
Alleen de uitgesproken tekst geldt.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Let me begin by underlining the importance of the Single European Sky initiative. In the past decade, air traffic in Europe has grown by more than fifty percent. At present, Europe has almost 9.2 million flights per year. On the busiest days of the year, we even see up to 31,000 flights per day. And air traffic in Europe will continue to expand in the future. Today’s volume of air traffic is expected to double by the year 2020.
If we focus exclusively on the flights being controlled by the Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre, we are now talking about almost 1.4 million civil flights per year in the upper airspace of the Benelux countries and Northwestern Germany. And his volume of traffic is expected to grow by five percent each year.
In short, an already busy airspace will only get more crowded in the years to come. The Dutch Government recognizes the economic importance of air travel, especially with respect to Amsterdam Airport, which is of major importance to our national economy.
The Netherlands therefore strongly supports the Single European Sky initiative. It helps to accommodate further growth in numbers and quality. Single European Sky, minimizes delays for passengers, helps to enhance current safety standard, improves all-round efficiency, and optimizes capacity meeting requirements of all airspace users. That’s good news for passengers, the government, the airlines and the rest of the aviation sector.
As Europe moves toward the creation of the Single European Sky, all providers of air-navigation services will need to be certified. I am proud to see that MUAC is one of the first providers to reach this milestone. So I would like to congratulate MUAC and Eurocontrol. Thanks to your hard work and professionalism, the certification process went very smoothly and was a great success. But to be honest, I expected nothing less. After all, MUAC has been in operation since 1972 and was the first example of cross-border functional airspace cooperation.
In fact, this certification process offers further proof that international cooperation in air traffic is bearing fruit. The Dutch National Supervisory Authority coordinated the process, but did so in close cooperation with their German, Belgian and Luxembourgian counterparts. And the creation of the Common Supervisory Team has paved the way for even closer cooperation in the future. This is, of course, very important, because the four National Supervisory Authorities will jointly monitor MUAC’s compliance with all Common Requirements for the Single European Sky.
Ladies and gentlemen, the road toward a Single European Sky is a long one. But step by step, we are getting closer to our final destination. And today, we have reached an important milestone. It fills me with pride to see that MUAC is again at the forefront of developments. I’m also very pleased that our four countries have successfully worked together in air-traffic management for almost thirty-five years now. And personally, I’m honored to be presenting this well-deserved certificate to Mr. Aguado – Director-General of Eurocontrol – and to Mr. Kloos – Director of MUAC.
