The Federal Association of German Air Carriers (BDF) argued for the opening of German airspace in favor of the Single European Sky (SES). Addressing the traffic committee of the German Bundestag, Joachim Hunold, member of the BDF board of directors and head of Air Berlin, underscored the necessity of border-crossing air traffic control structures, which could shorten flight routes and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by up to 12 percent.

“Our pilots crawl from one air traffic controller to the next on their flights within Europe,” said Hunold. “Rather than efficient direct flights, we zig-zag and create one holding pattern after the other. This is an immense waste of corporate and state capital.”

Air traffic control in European airspace is currently squeezed into a corset of national jurisdictions. These result in a total of 47 air traffic controllers with 22 operating systems and 30 programming languages causing detours that are harmful for the environment and impose costs in the billions on the airlines. Airlines spend almost twice as much on air traffic control in Europe as they do in the USA.

The implementation of Single European Sky requires cooperation between air traffic controllers and the creation of large functional blocks of airspace. So far, this step was not feasible due to restrictions in the German Basic Law. A respective reformation package was now gladly welcomed by the airlines.

The BDF represents the interests of German air carriers in the scheduled flight, charter flight and low cost segments in the face of the economy and politics. The members of the association are among the safest airlines in the world. They transport more than 120 million passengers each year, utilizing more than 750 modern aircraft. The companies generate an annual turnover of around 27 billion euros. Together, the BDF airlines provide 120,000 jobs.