While Eurocontrol's multinational Maastricht Upper Area Control (MUAC) Center aims to further improve its performance and productivity in air traffic management (ATM) in the short term and introduce free route airspace in 2018, some countries’ sovereignty concerns continue to raise barriers to overdue implementation of Single European Sky (SES) agreements.

Traffic has grown faster than expected this year and MUAC controllers anticipate a record number of flights, exceeding last year’s numbers by some three percent. MUAC manages traffic above 24,500 feet over Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Northwest Germany and a small part of Northern France, accounting for 17 percent of all European traffic and making it one of the busiest centers on the continent.

Airspace designers divided the area into cross-border sectors, split further into two horizontal layers. Authorities have begun to study introducing a third layer to generate more capacity. Plans that called for the study to start in December recently have stalled. “In some sector groups, the complexity is so high that creating more sectors or layers is not an option,” a spokeswoman said. Each sector has its own radio frequency.

Coordination with military controllers appears to have worked well and authorities anticipate that the efforts will result in further efficiency. Germany’s military air traffic control already resides within MUAC facilities, and plans call for integration of its staff as Eurocontrol personnel. Military traffic accounts for one percent of total flights but bears a heavy burden on limited airspace.

Since 2011, direct routes have proved effective. Today, more than 800 direct routes exist in the airspace controlled by MUAC and the Karlsruhe Upper Area Control center. “A crew is sure to be cleared to use such a direct route because it is part of the flight plan. In a fixed-route network, they have to carry extra fuel in case they are not given the direct route,” the spokeswoman explained. A direct route saves the typical flight 5 to 10 nautical miles, she added.

MUAC has now begun preparing for free route airspace, where an aircraft will gain clearance to fly from any entry point to any exit point, directly. The center plans to “phase in” free routes over the 2018-2019 period.

If execution of a wider SES agreement signed in 2004 took hold as planned, it would have accompanied MUAC’s moves toward more efficient ATM. Progress has proved slow, however. Most recently, for example, Germany has increased its overflight fees, expelling some traffic to neighboring countries and making MUAC’s workload even heavier.