Mr. Philip Hughes:

To turn to the air traffic capacity problem in terms of controllers, a number of states are now playing catch-up in terms of recruitment. This is the first piece. In the longer term we need to look at the systems we have to make sure they are more scalable to provide more support to air traffic controllers. This is one of the things we are considering at European level. Another element is the flexible use of airspace. The slide at the beginning of the meeting showed there are 17,800 controllers. If we had more flexible use of airspace, and if the traffic presented in a slightly different way, it would allow better use of the existing capacity. When we have 39 providers and 68 area control centres, it becomes difficult because of the fragmented nature of what we have in Europe.

In Ireland we have free route airspace. Generally if I look at it domestically the numbers are very good. When I go further east, as I said, they start to deteriorate in a significant way. I do not think it is a local problem per se because there are very modern systems and good controllers, and AirNav runs a very efficient operation. The problem is that when we move into central Europe there is very congested airspace. One of the things we have been doing is encouraging Germany, France and the Benelux countries to have more flexible use of airspace. To be fair, they have been responsible and there are plans in the pipeline to do this. We need to build a system that presents capacity in the places where demand comes. Flight profiles have changed since the Ukrainian war. There is a situation in the Balkans, for instance, whereby they are completely saturated and cannot cope. We need a system that is more flexible in terms of managing this. This really is the major goal of the document I circulated, which is the European ATM master plan. We need to have enablers in order to do it.