Podcast: Aviation’s Swerves On Safety And Sustainability

Editors discuss the overlapping issues of safety and sustainability in the U.S. and Europe as a busy summer flying season looms, amid government pledges to address airspace congestion and shifting priorities on air transport sustainability.

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Transcript

Karen Walker:

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Window Seat, our Aviation Week Air Transport podcast. I'm ATW and Aviation Week Network Air Transport Editor-in-Chief Karen Walker. Delighted to welcome you on board. Now, joining me today are three of my editor colleagues. They are ATW Europe and Middle East Editor Alan Dron, who is based in London, ATW and Routes Senior Editor Aaron Karp, and CAPA Senior Analyst Americas Lori Ranson. Aaron and Lori, like me, are based in the Washington, D.C. area, so a big welcome to everyone. Thank you for joining me today. Our discussion is going to focus on two big air transport industry topics, safety and sustainability. Think about it as the two S's, and more specifically, how the approaches and priorities towards air transport safety and sustainability by governments and agencies either side of the Atlantic have shifted this year.

In the U.S. there was a fatal collision in January between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet that was on final approach to Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. There have also been multiple near-miss accidents involving airliners at or over major U.S. airports. This month, the new Trump administration announced big and urgent plans to modernize the country's air traffic management system. New DOT Secretary Sean Duffy has also announced a plan for New York Newark Airport, that saw three ATC system outages in April and May. Newark, Duffy said, has become a top priority for new ATC equipment and modernization and reorganization. While that work gets underway, airlines are being asked to cut the numbers of flights in and out of the busy New Jersey airport, which is also a hub for United Airlines.

Over in Europe, the air traffic management coordinator, Eurocontrol, has warned of a potentially bad summer of air traffic congestion and delays unless urgent action is taken, which presumably will also mean cutting flights. In the UK, meanwhile, hundreds of airline industry and fuel experts gathered in May at a Sustainable Skies Summit in Farnborough to discuss the increasingly uncertain likelihood of the global air transport industry meeting its goal of being carbon net zero by 2050.

Why are these things linked? Well, in my opinion, the swerve toward maintaining or restoring safety in the skies has become the number one topic this year when it comes to commercial aviation, and that I think has implications for how much focus, investment and research will go into aviation sustainability, which of course is also a huge topic. I think there's a practicality and inevitability that when there are two big problems, air travel safety and air travel sustainability, with both being very complicated and expensive tasks, safety will obviously win.

With that, Aaron, let me start with you. Timelines for the U.S. DOT plan for ATC modernization in general and for Newark in particular are vague, but Secretary Duffy has referred a lot to the 2025 to 2028 window in general and to now in Newark. Is that realistic?

Aaron Karp:

In a word, I would say no. First of all, there's a real money issue here. In the Biden administration's last budget proposal, they proposed 8 billion over five years for ATC modernization, and you mentioned the word vague. There's been a lot of vagueness about how much this is going to cost, and the estimate being thrown out there is about 12.5 billion. You can see that there would be a significant increase needed, but I think there's a lot of feeling out there that it's a lot more than 12.5 billion. Congress is right now wrangling with a budget bill, and they're going to put or have said that they're going to put ATC modernization in there, but we'll see. I think that that's the problem and has always been the problem with ATC modernization, is that they have to rely on funding from Congress and a procurement process for technology and that sort of thing.

I think there's a structural issue. We've talked before on this podcast about how the FAA has an inherent conflict of interest, in that they both regulate and operate the ATC system. There's been debates for a year about ATC privatization and going to a model more like, say, Canada or the UK, where Canada has Nav Canada operating air traffic control and also doing a lot of innovative things, in fact developing their own technology that they often then sell to the rest of the world. Then Transport Canada regulates it. There's a division there and one can focus on the operation, one can focus on the regulation, and you get a lot of the bureaucracy out of ATC and ATC is able to function on a more consistent monetary timeline.

I think, also in terms of the structural issues, there's been a lot of talk about equipment and modernizing the equipment. The average age of an ATC tower in the United States is 40 years. The average age of an en route center is 62 years. The FAA has said ... and this is a quote ... that these facilities have functioned beyond their intended lifespans. In some sense you're talking about having to, if you really want to modernize the system, rebuilding these facilities or significantly modernizing them, because there's a lot of maintenance issues that are constantly cropping up just because of the age.

The last thing I would say is that air traffic control technology moves faster than often the ability to modernize it. You come up with a system in, say, 2015, and you do the procurement and you install it, and then by the time you install it, there's new technology out there. The thing that air traffic control providers are really trying to move towards is something called trajectory-based operations, or TBO, which would mean that the airplane, from the moment it taxis from the gate at one airport to the moment it lands at the other airport, is constantly sending information to air traffic control, so the people in the tower are not just getting the aircraft just before it's coming into their airspace.

They're getting information the whole way, and so they can say, long before the airplane gets to the airport, "Change your route a little bit here, avoid this weather there." That would create significant efficiencies, but that's something that's still being worked on. That would require equipment in airliners. It's an ongoing process, and even if you do everything you can, even if they achieve everything they can, they won't have fixed some of the underlying problem, not just in the U.S., in the world, that air traffic control is very reactive rather than predictive. That reactive nature inevitably leads to inefficiencies.

Karen Walker:

There's a really good point, Aaron. Thank you. I think it's interesting that you raised about privatization. I think with this whole thing, you and I and Lori, we've heard this over and over again for so long. Secretary Duffy, with all due respect, has not. He's only just come into this world this year. I don't think there is an understanding of just the amount of bureaucracy and how slow this machine works when it comes to these things. As you say, it's not just a money thing, although the money is big. It's not really even just an equipment thing. It's how the system is managed. Right now they are 3,000 short of air traffic controllers as well, and you can't just pick people off the street and pop those into the towers and it all works. There's a lot to do. Lori, you live in the States too. What's your thoughts here, and what do you think prompted Secretary Duffy to make these announcements so soon in his tenure?

Lori Ranson:

Well, he walked into his job right as that jolting and fatal crash happened at National, and since then we've seen some other high-profile incidents, again at National and elsewhere in the U.S. airspace system. That has prompted some partisan rhetoric that the system was safer under the previous administration. Coming out, I think, with a bold plan for these ATC upgrades is in some ways a show of force to the public, that DOT is going to finally move the needle in a significant way on ATC reform. Of course, Duffy has claimed the Biden administration failed to do that.

Even without the fatal crash in January and other recent incidents, though, aviation is such a high-profile industry that working to achieve some reforms will be a major win. Also, just simply, given the major disruptions at Newark, the crash and other incidents, no action from the DOT or the FAA just makes for bad optics.

Karen Walker:

That is very true, yeah. You've got to be seen to be doing something here. Yeah, that is true. Alan, can we just turn to Europe? You're based in the UK, which used to be part of Europe, and so you have firsthand experience of the types of air traffic congestion and delays there. It amused me that Eurocontrol is putting out this warning of a potential bad summer of congestion and delays. I'm thinking, "So what's new?" It always is there, isn't it? We've just had the Paris Orly Airport have a big outage of its control tower, just this week. What's your perspective of what Eurocontrol is trying to do there?

Alan Dron:

Well, Karen, Eurocontrol has put forward a plan to hopefully get through the busy summer period, and that includes things like filing realistic flight plans, prioritizing the first rotation of the day and ensuring that schedules are realistic, which I have to say sounds so basic that you wouldn't really have thought those things would need to be said. I was talking to Eurocontrol yesterday and they're forecasting a 5% increase in flights this summer, but potentially a 20% increase in delays over 2024, and 2024 wasn't exactly good.

Now, to be fair to Eurocontrol, they do point out that they've been urging countries to invest in new equipment and more controllers for years, but that's the point. It's ultimately down to individual governments and ANSPs to sort out funding, and it's just not happening. Eurocontrol estimates it's 10 to 20% down on the number of air traffic controllers needed in certain countries. Not all, certain countries such as Spain, Germany, Greece, and several in the Balkans. The Spanish and Greek situation doesn't bode well for people taking Mediterranean holidays this summer. You might be advised to perhaps pack a good paperback to read while you're waiting at airports, like War and Peace perhaps.

Eurocontrol also makes the point that the war in Ukraine has made about 20% of its airspace unusable, which has led to much heavier traffic flows around that country, and countries on the periphery just haven't been staffed up to cope with displaced flows. That's fair enough. As an Airlines for Europe spokesman said to me this week, "Well, yeah, we understand, but the war's been going on for three years now. Surely they could have worked something out by now." Will airlines reduce summer flights this late in the game if delays become too bad? I guess the answer is only if they have absolutely no choice in the matter.

Karen Walker:

I love the point you made at the beginning there of it almost begs belief, really, how basic, the things Eurocontrol are saying that they're going to make a priority this year. You just think, "Well, why weren't they always a priority?" If you're talking about asking airlines to cut their schedules for this summer, that should have been done last year before they set their schedules. They've set their schedules. They've sold the tickets. It just seems again like they're just making decisions too late. It just seems like more of the same. I don't know about you, but ... it sounds like we're on the same page here ... I don't feel a lot of optimism that just because they put the warning out, that something's going to happen.

Alan Dron:

I feel you're right. I feel it could be a pretty bad summer for people trying to get around Europe this year.

Karen Walker:

Alan, I said this was about safety and sustainability. I'm going to turn back to you on sustainability, now because you were at that Sustainable Skies Summit in Farnborough just a couple of weeks back. Can you just give us a little flavor? What was the mood among speakers there and attendees, in terms of we know that there is now much more uncertainty about meeting the 2050 goal? We also know that they're putting out a lot of estimates on big numbers for costs for all of this, and now everybody's turning to safety. Did this come up in the conversation? What was the general mood, and optimism or not?

Alan Dron:

As you know, Karen ... you and I have been in enough conferences over the years ... sometimes it is not what's actually said at a conference that strikes you, it's just a gut feel. The gut feel I came away from after two days was that, as you said, there's just an awful lot of uncertainty. Uncertainty about government policy, uncertainty about government support in funding terms, uncertainty about whether the economics of sustainable aviation fuel plants are even there.

I have to say, when you have the head of sustainability at the UK regulator, the CAA, stand up and say there's a, quote, huge amount of uncertainty, close quote, as to whether the UK aviation sector will be able to hit its sustainability targets, and that it is going to be, quote, incredibly hard, close quote, to meet emission reduction targets, I think you've got problems.

You may recall, about three years ago now, the then-head of Qatar Airways, the very forthright Akbar Al Baker, rather put the cat among the pigeons when he basically said there was no way in hell that commercial aviation would meet its hopes for 2050 targets. I have to say increasingly I feel perhaps he was right.

Karen Walker:

Yeah. Sadly, I'm with you there. I concur. I think there's been a big reality check, and now it's an even bigger issue because of, like I say, this understandable switch to safety. As you say, they probably can't both be done together at the strength that they need to be done. Aaron, Lori, if I can turn back to you, IATA has often said that if the European single skies initiative was implemented ... that's a modern integrated ATM system across Europe ... the efficiencies could reduce airline emissions by as much as 12%. Presumably they'd be the same kind of metrics if the U.S. had implemented NextGen, its own ATM modernization plan, that has essentially gone nowhere. I wonder whether either of you feel that there is a potential sustainability payoff if there was ATM modernization fast-tracking on both sides of the Atlantic. Aaron, can I start with you?

Aaron Karp:

Sure. I actually think they're very related, in that if sustainable aviation fuel is going to be a challenge and is increasingly seen as unrealistic, the engine technology, I mean, if you talk to experts like at Embry-Rendell University, they'll say the jet engine has reached its ... the increasing amazing improvements in efficiency that have been made generation to generation have reached the end of the line, that you can't improve the efficiency much more. We're still dealing with the same aerodynamic airframe design.

The really realistic path for reducing emissions would be air traffic control. I think airlines could pivot, certainly, to saying this is not just a safety issue. If you want to reduce emissions, like you said, there's the 12% that they've talked about, the integrated sky. I mentioned trajectory-based operations. There's a lot of talk that that would significantly reduce emissions.

It seems to me, at least in the near term, that if you're saying that SAF is unrealistic and the technology, hydrogen technology, that sort of thing, is unrealistic, then the best way, the best realistic way to reduce emissions, would be to modernize ATC to have much more efficient flight paths. I think there is a real connection there.

Karen Walker:

Yeah, absolutely. Lori, what about you? I mean, they've known this for the longest time, or at least on the airline side they've been saying, "We also need efficient air traffic management systems." Is this the moment, the light bulb moment, for the governments too?

Lori Ranson:

Well, and I think airlines need to push the sustainability aspect of air traffic modernization, because it's inherent. With these new procedures, in terms of takeoff and landing procedures, airspace procedures, the aircraft just burn less fuel, far less fuel. If you can implement these procedures, your emissions are going to be cut. Your emissions are going to decrease. I don't understand why airlines don't push for the sustainability angle as well as the safety angle, because I think they're intertwined, like you said earlier.

Karen Walker:

Yeah. It makes sense, and that could be a pivot that actually would be useful. As you say, the procedures are a huge part of this, but it's also all those planes ... especially in Europe, as Alan knows ... that are doing endless circles because of congestion. They're burning fuel, aren't they? Alan?

Alan Dron:

Yeah. I just smiled to myself when you talked about implementing the equivalent of Single European Sky as a modern integrated ATM system in the United States. As you and I know, Single European Sky, well, let's just say I've seen glaciers move faster than the Single European Sky project. For non-European listeners, one of the main objects of the Single European Sky was to get rid of some of the national airspace boundaries and combine larger multinational areas into what they call functional airspace blocks.

Now, this largely simply hasn't happened, for three main reasons. Firstly, some countries frankly don't like the idea of giving up sovereignty over their airspace. Secondly, air traffic control unions are fearful of job losses. Thirdly, frankly, there's no political momentum behind it. It just never comes to the top of the things-to-do agenda. Single European Sky, I'm told it is progressing, but at a very, very slow pace. It's really not delivering the benefits that people had hoped for.

Karen Walker:

As you say. Well, the problem there, a lot of the problem anyway, part of the problem, is national thinking when they're supposed to be thinking across all of the space, the European Union, but they're not. They do like to also think of sustainability in national terms too. They all have their own ideas, but they still came around an EU mandate, if you like, when it came to sustainability. Again, maybe a light bulb could eventually go off.

Everyone, can I just finally ask, I mentioned about the increasing costs of transitioning aviation to net zero. IATA has put that at around $4.7 trillion over 30 years. If there is less financial support from governments, oil companies, investors, et cetera, who's going to pay for that? We know it can't all come down onto the airlines. They haven't got any money. The public says it wants clean flights. We're always hearing that, but will they pay higher fares for them, or will they just be happy to focus on, "Is my flight safe," and not worry about sustainability as this goes forward? Lori, can I start with you on that one?

Lori Ranson:

Yeah. I would say for a lot of travelers, I think there's a disconnect between wanting to be environmentally responsible and paying higher airfare. I would just point to look at the demise of passenger carbon offsetting programs at airlines. Airlines said, "Oh, we're going to move our focus to staff and other investments," but the reality is there's little uptake from the passenger side in those programs. I don't think you can pass a lot of the cost increase on to passengers.

Karen Walker:

No, I agree. The point, is it one airline's got to be the brave one to make the move, and they'll back off if all the others don't raise their fares, I think. Aaron, your thoughts?

Aaron Karp:

Well, one thing I would mention is that if we get to a point where it looks like the airlines are not going to meet their targets, you could see governments and I think you very well may see governments saying, "We're going to reduce the number of operations that are allowed." If that creates more scarcity, that would increase airfares in and of itself. Not being able to hit sustainability targets, especially I would think in Europe, where there's so much focus on this ... and we've already seen airports like Schiphol trying to limit flights ... if, because the airlines aren't meeting their targets, the governments mandate fewer flights, then fewer flights means higher fares. I think that there may be no way to avoid the sustainability issue.

I think in terms of airline investment, to get to a really, really efficient air traffic control system, as I said, will require equipment on planes that would be sending a lot of data to air traffic control centers. Airlines could pivot to saying, "Well, we're going to invest money in the equipment to make the air traffic control system better, if investing in SAF is not something that is going to meet the demands." I think it may not be so simple if governments get involved and say, "Well, we're going to reduce the flights," because reducing flights by definition will raise fares.

Karen Walker:

Alan, maybe a quick last word from a European perspective?

Alan Dron:

Yeah, I'm very much with the lottery on this one. I mean, every survey that is done with passengers comes out with pretty much the same result, namely about 90% of people say, "Oh, yes, yes, we want cleaner flights," and, "Are you prepared to pay for them," and it goes down to maybe 5%. The number of people who actually stump up for, as you say, the offsetting schemes, is even lower. Yeah. Frankly, no. The public may want clean skies but not be prepared to pay for them, sadly.

Karen Walker:

Yeah, I think you're right. The Europeans are so used now to their ultra low-cost carriers and the really almost ridiculously cheap flights, but it gets them to where they want for their vacations, as you say, and I don't see them wanting to add a lot of cost to that to make it so-called sustainable.

Alan, Aaron, Lori, thank you so much for joining me today. Good discussion. I enjoyed that. Thank you very much. Thank you also to our producer, Cory Hitt, and of course, a huge thank you to our listeners. Make sure you don't miss us each week by subscribing to Window Seat on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen. This is Karen Walker, disembarking from Window Seat.