Mr. Philip Hughes:

To answer the Deputy's question, we are reaching saturation from an efficiency point of view. From a safety point of view, obviously that is primary, so what happens is the restrictions are put on to protect the sectors. The net effect is more delays, frankly. In fact, if we go to the next slide, we have indicated here the way forward for 2025 and beyond. We think there are three bits that we really need to do. First of all, we need to address the capacity shortfalls, which is the issue Deputy Farrell has highlighted. Second, we also need to improve the traffic demand accuracy. We have talked about scheduling and we have spoken about making sure, so we are asking all of the airlines to give us, by October, their complete schedule for next year and we will engage with them with regard to understanding the impact. A lot of it is trying to get the data to understand what is involved.

Members probably know, for instance, that the challenge will be the fact that Turkish Airlines is planning to double its fleet. Members will have seen that EasyJet and Ryanair have a shortfall in delivery, so we know there are more aircraft coming into the system. Therefore, we need to address that and fully deliver on what we proposed, the five pillars that I spoke about before and which are dealing with the impact of weather to try to make that less of a complexity, particularly in congested sectors, and then to look at operational priorities, such as discipline with regard to how they execute their flight plans and making sure the schedules built in are realistic in trying to maximise the efficiency. They are short-term ways in which we can do it. We are looking at 2025, and that is our goal in trying to deal with the near-term thing.

There is a challenge. If you look at the master plan, you are probably looking at a maximum of 46,000 flights per day versus 36,000 at the moment. In my view, there needs to be a fundamental investment in system. There are three things. First, with regard to the systems themselves, you need to look at the architecture, and open architecture so you have scalable systems. One of the things they struggle with today is increasing capacity. Some of that involves the use of technical solutions, perhaps even in the longer term artificial intelligence, to help us to look at the predictability and management. Second, the biggest single efficiency you can make with air traffic controllers is if we can introduce datalink. At the moment, it is all done by voice using VHF comms. With datalink, and we know this from our centre in Maastricht, you can increase the air traffic controller's capacity and efficiency very radically. To do that, we need-----