BY MOHAMMAD SHOEB
DOHA: With the rapidly growing aviation industry in the GCC, a single air traffic management system in the region akin to Europe’s ‘Eurocontrol’ will soon become inevitable to mitigate risks due to increasing congestion in the airspace, Akber Al Baker, CEO, Qatar Airways, said yesterday.
“I agree that there will be congestion in the way the airspace is (currently) managed. There will be a time, in our joint opinion, that there will have to be a single air traffic management system similar to Eurocontrol to monitor and operate a very congested airspace,” he added.
Founded in 1960, Eurocontrol is the European organisation for the safety of air navigation. Headquartered in Haren, Brussels, it has 40 members which coordinate and plan air traffic control for Europe. Working groups have made efforts to address the growing problem of air traffic congestion due to limited airspace in the region but not much progress has been achieved.
To a question about airspace congestion, Al Baker said: “We want to mitigate this risk. Qatar and several countries are involved in this problem to free up new air routes to facilitate the growth of the three leading airlines, including Qatar Airways, which are growing very rapidly,”
Experts consider airspace “invisible infrastructure” important for the growth of the aviation industry. Usually it is controlled by defence departments of states, leaving limited corridors for civil aircraft to fly. For instance, 50 percent of airspace in the UAE is controlled by its Defence Department.
On Qatar’s airspace reserved for defence purposes, Al Baker said: “This is very difficult to quantify because we are talking about airways, not airspace in general.”
However, Abdul Aziz Mohammad Al Noaimi, Chairman of Qatar Civil Aviation Authority, said: “There is no limitation to the use of airspace in Qatar. It is controlled, and everybody can use it. But civil aircraft cannot just fly in the airspace themselves. There are specific routes for them.”
The civil aviation industry in the region is growing fast, putting pressure on the limited airspace corridors. Once fully operational, Hamad International Airport (HIA) will handle an average of 1,000 aircraft carrying over 135,000 passengers daily from across the world. The number of aircraft movements through the UAE’s airspace last year was more than 741,000 and is estimated to reach about 900,000 by 2015, and 1.13m by 2020, according to official statistics.
Analysts say airspace congestion is one of the biggest challenges facing the aviation industry in the region.
But freeing up more military airspace for civil use is not a problem as it requires will power. NATS, global leader in air traffic services and solutions, recently completed work on the Qatar Airspace Design and Implementation Project for HIA.
The Peninsula
