Seamless Skies

It was the airline industry’s grand plan for Asia’s air traffic system. Seamless Skies would bring harmonisation to air traffic management, create efficient flows along the region’s airways and save tens of millions of dollars in costly fuel. So, why hasn’t it come to pass?

Ask Blair Cowles, Regional Director for Safety and Flight Operations (SFO) in Asia Pacific for the International Air Transport Association (IATA) what is happening with Asian Seamless Skies and his response is unequivocal. “The sad reality is there has been very little progress from an airline perspective… there has been very, very limited progress in driving forward anything to do with Seamless Skies.” He is far from alone in that assessment. “It’s easy to come up with a slogan like Seamless Asian skies,” says Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) director General Andrew Herdman. “That sets the way forward as a sort of common goal. Delivering on it as you found in Europe is much more challenging. I think the efforts are continuing but the pace of progress has been disappointing. I think that has been acknowledged.”

The grand plan, in other words, is stuck in the slow lane, a decade after discussions began with the aim of transforming air traffic management across the world’s fastest growing aviation market. It promised to be a mammoth task, given the region covers vast airspace, with 49 Flight Information Regions (FIRs) in 39 States, many of them with different levels of regulation, technical ability and system sophistication. Nevertheless, action was imperative. When the first meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) Asia/Pacific Seamless ATM Planning Group (APSAPG) took place in Bangkok in early 2012 – though it had actually been established two years earlier – the region already handled 26 per cent of global passenger numbers and forecasts saw that rise to at least 40 per cent within two decades. Aircraft numbers were expected to grow three-fold. Today, IATA projects the Asia-Pacific will have 3.5 billion passengers by 2036, twice that of North America and Europe combined. This will make the region the aviation industry’s biggest customer for years and the largest buyer of new aviation technology. It was inconceivable, said ICAO, that traffic increases of this magnitude could be handled effectively and efficiently without significant enhancement of air traffic management processes. “Failure to act will not only compromise safety in the Region but will also limit the economic benefit of aviation if people and goods cannot be moved safely, efficiently and in a cost-effective manner,” it added. Yet, by the time Asian Transport Ministers met in Beijing in 2018 progress had been pretty much non-existent, a report card likely to be repeated when they meet again in India this year (2020). Cowles has described that progress as “glacial”.