Connecting Europe’s future transport system

Date: 02/11/00

The promise of 'open skies' in the EU has not been fully realised, with air traffic control at the heart of the problem. Pierre Jeanniot, director-general of the International Air Transport Association, insists the answer lies in creating a genuinely integrated transport system

IN THE 1960s, John Lennon wrote "She's got a ticket to ride...but she don't care." This lyric might be the rallying cry for the development of the future European transport system. I believe it is both desirable and feasible to have only one ticket to ride, on a quite complex journey using various forms of transport, without anyone having to care about reservations, connections, further ticketing, baggage delivery, or control authorities.

But before that happens, something must be done about European air traffic control.

For too long, transport options within Europe have been presented in terms of 'either/or': either take the train, or the autoroute/autobahn/motorway, or fly. Because Europe is a small continent, geographically speaking, we have been led to believe that it can offer competing and time/price-sensitive options, with the travelling consumer free to make a rational choice. At least that is the theory; in practice, this choice is being conditioned.

The infrastructure available for each type of transport - and remember, this is in general the result of investing scarce public money - is not the result of a proper evaluation of costs and potential benefits for Europe as a whole. It is the result of continuing and arbitrary pre-conceived notions and of political horse-trading within national boundaries.

Where has aviation come in this horse-trading? Too often, last.

Until recently, European aviation liberalisation has been declared by the deregulators to be a major success for air travellers in terms of prices and choices. But now, as the playwright Alan Bennett once put it, "the air is thick with the sound of chickens coming home to roost". Delays and cancellations make an increasing mockery of those enhanced choices and much lower prices.

The truth is that the promises of European liberalisation have been only partially fulfilled. Liberalisation has been only partially implemented and, therefore, can only be considered a partial success. European liberalisation has ignored the fact that air transport is, at the very least, tripartite. Airlines cannot function without airports and air traffic control.

The very basic objective of air transport liberalisation was the creation of the European single market, based on the free flow of people, capital and goods. This implied the abolition of Europe's frontiers, but medieval borders still exist in the sky and are creating havoc with the efficiency of Europe's air transport system.

The total cost of these delays for the airlines and their passengers has been estimated at €8.4 billion in 1999, compared with the airlines' world-wide net profits of only €2.5 billion.

For both short-run and longer-term relief, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has suggested a five-point plan, an integral part of which is to give Eurocontrol (European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation) and the EU the necessary powers to make Eurocontrol decisions directly apply in member states. Air traffic control should be liberalised, made more competitive and given appropriate incentives.

We are not proposing red-blooded capitalism, but a form of mutual, or cooperative, with a maximum of bond-issue financing, and a minimum of equity share-holding. Our proposals for improving European air traffic control have received widespread support and endorsement from bodies as diverse as the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation - CANSO - and the Airline-Consumer Forum.

The European Commission, under the able leadership of Transport Commissioner Loyola de Palacio, has made proposals for a European single sky. These were followed by a report containing similar recommendations from the European Parliament's transport committee and the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly.

Yet the lion's share by far of transport infrastructure investment is being devoted to rail. The consumers of Europe are not complaining loudly about a lack of rail infrastructure. But there is a lot of dissatisfaction over the lack of European air traffic control services.

In this case, the current Commission's attitude to airport slot allocation unfortunately focuses on the wrong answers to the problem. The problem is a general lack of slots. The solution is to create more slots, make them mutually more usable at either end of a route and use existing slots, including those at less-busy airports, more intensively.

Arbitrarily freeing up slots and handing them to 'new' competition does not work in many cases. Look at the Copenhagen-Frankfurt route. Why are the slots which were freed up as a condition of the Lufthansa-SAS Alliance not being taken up? To answer the question is to understand the nature of a 'hub' - Copenhagen and Frankfurt being two large hubs by European standards.

A hub develops either because of a big natural market in its immediate vicinity and/or the ability of its spokes to both distribute and concentrate traffic. The more spokes there are, the more added value to the hub. A large carrier at any hub benefits substantially from this. But the new entrant is denied this feed unless it is allowed to share ticketing with other carriers - a practice known as 'interlining'.

A true origin-destination business market needs high frequency to provide convenience and flexibility, and if a new entrant does not have high frequencies, it must have interlining. Otherwise, it is left with deep-discount origin-destination leisure traffic which is, in fact, a natural charter market. So new scheduled operators stay away, increased competition is denied, and the economic value of the hub is decreased, rather than increased.

Most of today's major European air hubs are congested - and looking at a time horizon of 2015-2030, few new ones are being planned. This situation suggests that it is perhaps time to look at the development of regional, secondary hubs with good railway feeders. Perhaps Nantes, Marseilles, Barcelona, Naples, Strasbourg, Munich and Manchester could have an increasing role to play.

Achieving efficient and fully integrated European travel across all forms of transport will require us to overcome many challenges and, as ever, the devil will be in the details.

Trains must be available and bookable through airline computer reservation systems. Convergence must take place between the conditions of carriage of the two types of transport. Airline tickets must be available for train rides. Passenger and baggage check-in must occur at the point where the journey starts. Baggage claim and customs services must be available at the final destination, whether it is a train station or airport.

Some people may assume that such increased intermodality would not be good news for regional aviation in Europe. But regional aviation can, and must, also be given its fair chance to expand and create new markets in Europe. Why not stimulate growth by linking regional business centres with better air services, with routes such as Bologna to Saragossa, Bristol to Nantes, or Brno to Trieste? For business development in such sectors, where there is either a natural barrier or no high-speed rail link, nothing can beat regional aviation, with appropriate aircraft size and frequencies.

For efficient intermodality to be achieved, we have to recognise and address some further challenges, a mixture of the general and the specific.

Firstly, high-speed rail services in Europe do not have baggage cars or baggage transfer facilities, resulting in lower customer service standards than the airlines provide for an air-to-air interline or connecting journey.

Secondly, IATA has developed sophisticated standards for efficient and customer-friendly interlining over the past 50 years. It could, therefore, perform a pivotal role in setting up intermodal ticket-sharing. However, it cannot today accommodate all surface operator needs, using traditional means.

Lastly, there is money. Would the Commission be willing to direct some of its research and development funds into helping the rail and aviation industry bring about a truly effective system of interlining across all forms of transport?

Today, many airlines have chosen to work with surface operators using a type of code-share relationship. This practice overcomes at least one of the above challenges. Selected trains have been given flight numbers and integrated into the airline sales and marketing systems.

Europe needs an integrated transport system which fully exploits the synergies of the various modes. This would provide the EU with an important tool for greater intra-European trade and economic development, make better use of scarce infrastructure resources, contribute to environmental protection and, last but certainly not least, make the consumers happy.

The promise of 'open skies' in the EU has not been fully realised, with air traffic control at the heart of the problem. Author, who is director-general of the International Air Transport Association, insists the answer lies in creating a genuinely integrated transport system.