Eurocontrol and ACI Europe have signed a memorandum of understanding to make European aviation more efficient and sustainable.
The organizations will address ways to improve the efficiency of air transport through increased integration between operations at and around airport platforms and air traffic management. This is intended to create a collaborative decision-making process that will ensure punctual operations and better use of existing capacity, and unlock latent capacity on the ground and in the air. Such integration will result in one-on-one information exchange between the organizations’ network operations plan (NOP) and airport operations plan (AOP). Heading up the cooperation will be Eurocontrol’s Technical, Operations and Safety Committee (TOSC) and network manager alongside ACI Europe’s member airports.
The organizations will work toward sustainable air transport through the continued development and outreach of their existing schemes: ACI’s airport carbon accreditation and Eurocontrol’s Collaborative Environmental Management (CEM) initiative. ACI’s airport carbon accreditation recognizes airports that have reduced their carbon emissions throughout their operations. Eurocontrol’s CEM scheme provides process guidance through which airports can reduce their environmental impact in close cooperation with their operational stakeholders.
The MoU, which replaces an existing agreement dating from 2008, was signed by Olivier Jankovec, director general of ACI Europe, and Eamonn Brennan, director general of Eurocontrol. Jankovec said, “For Europe’s airports, recovering from Covid-19 and the imperative to ‘build back better’ means chasing every opportunity to increase their operational efficiency and reduce their environmental footprint. Over the past years, Eurocontrol has come to play an increasingly important role in supporting not just airports but the whole aviation ecosystem in that direction. The challenges we face in progressing further, and the interconnected nature of aviation, mean enhanced collaboration and integration are both key. This is precisely what this new agreement between ACI Europe and Eurocontrol is about. We look forward to our continued collaboration.”
Brennan said, “Flights were down 44% last year across Europe to 6.2 million, while at the same time passenger numbers were down 59% – a loss of 1.4 billion. Eurocontrol is focused on supporting European aviation and is working closely with airports to deliver enhanced operational efficiency and sustainable solutions as we recover from the pandemic. Time and again our organizations have shown that working together in areas as diverse as innovation, R&D, urban air mobility and optimizing performance at all levels reaps even greater benefits for aviation. We look forward to strengthening our collaboration even further for the benefit of the wider aviation network as a whole.”