With SESAR’s support, airlines are increasingly free to plan their preferred trajectories across national borders – saving time and fuel and reducing carbon emissions.

The implementation of cross-border free route airspace has the potential to increase flight efficiency and decrease aviation’s carbon footprint. By harmonising procedures and standards across Europe, SESAR is working to make this potential a reality.   

Instead of having to fly a fixed route, with free route airspace (FRA), airspace users can choose the optimal flight path based on current weather conditions, air traffic and other factors. Not only does the concept enhance flight efficiency, it also reduces fuel consumption and minimises a flight’s environmental impact.

Although used in most European countries, the benefits of FRA tend to stop at national borders. This is largely the result of Europe’s fragmented airspace. Managed by 37 separate air navigation service providers (ANSPs), this fragmentation has proven to be a challenging environment for introducing free route airspace that spans across borders.

Cross-border FRA changes that.

With cross-border free route airspace, flight crews are able fly their preferred trajectories not just within their airspace, but across multiple flight information regions (areas of airspace managed by a designated ANSP).

This extension of FRA across national borders also amplifies its benefits. With cross-border FRA, aircraft can fly more direct routes over longer distances, thus saving even more time, costs and fuel. This is why adopting cross-border free routes is seen as an essential tool for modernising air traffic management and making aviation safer and more sustainable and efficient.

Working to harmonise procedures and standards across Europe, SESAR plays a central role in making cross-border free route airspace a reality.

The solution

The ‘optimised traffic management to enable free routing in high and very high complexity cross border environments’ (PJ.06-01) SESAR Solution(1) investigates the impact of cross border FRA on fuel efficiency and predictability, as well as any impact it may have air traffic controller performance.

The results

Validation exercises showed that airspace safety and capacity was maintained, while environmental benefits were significant. No negative impact on controllers’ performance was detected.

The details

  • The provision of free routes across flight information regions and national boundaries requires appropriate airspace changes.
  • Airspace users gain maximum benefit when FRA is supported by appropriate airspace design, as well as new flight data processing systems and other ATM concepts, such as those deployed in the context of SESAR (e.g., airspace management and advanced flexible use of airspace, which provides the most efficient airspace organisation and management in response to civil and military airspace user requirements).
  • When putting cross-border FRA into operation, its implementation must be synchronised among all stakeholders (e.g., ANSPs, airspace users, the EUROCONTROL Network Manager, military stakeholders) to maintain a harmonised airspace.

In action

Thirty-six countries/territories have already implemented initial free route airspace, as defined in the CP1 Regulation, and are part of cross-border FRA initiatives(2).

Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Maastricht Upper Airspace Control (MUAC), Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

The deployment initiative ‘CLEAN ATM2’(3), set up in June 2023, will enable cross-border FRA to be introduced almost everywhere in Europe, including Spain and Portugal; the airspace between Italy, Malta, and the Balkans; as well as part of Central and Eastern Europe.

These projects alone will bring cross-border FRA into 60% of the European airspace. As a result, Europe is on track to achieving its goal of 100% coverage by the end of 2025(4).

The successful implementation of FRA within and across EU countries, as well as the many technical system upgrades that enable it, is the result of the excellent cooperation between numerous people and entities, including: the Network Manager and operational stakeholders (ANSPs, military authorities and airlines, Computer Flight Plan Service Providers), as well as SESAR deployment, SESAR innovation, and the European Defence Agency (EDA).


References

  1. Optimised traffic management to enable free routing in high and very high complexity environment
  2. Free route airspace (FRA) implementation projection charts
  3. CLEAN ATM and GREEN CNS – coordinated by the SESAR Deployment manager – selected by EC for CEF funding | SESAR DM
  4. The highway to the digital sky: A deep-dive into the SESAR project