FABs continue to feel the heat

As the European Commission (EC) prepares to launch legal action against member states' failure in December 2012 to implement Functional Airspace Blocks (FABs), opinion is split across Europe's aviation community on whether they are a lost cause.

Nine regional FABs were envisaged at the heart of the Single European Sky (SES). However, only two – the UK-Ireland and Danish-Swedish FABs – have been declared as established and notified to the EC.

It is now "clear that the FABs are in trouble", Marian-Jean Marinescu, Romanian member of the European Parliament who follows transport policy issues, told a public hearing on the SES at the EU Economic and Social Committee in Brussels on 21 January. “If all stakeholders really had the political will for an SES, we could do it in six months – without going through all these FABs.”