Europe’s air transport players want the EU to reduce administrative costs and to improve its legislation dealing with the aviation sector.
The EU is often blamed for too much bureaucracy. It is also the case of the air transport sector. The European Regions Airline Association (ERA), an association that represents air transport in Europe"s regions, sees the overregulation as the biggest threat to the industry. According to ERA’s Mike Ambrose, bureaucratic inefficiencies create additional and unnecessary costs. The association has recently issued a paper that focuses on these problems.
They point out that high-speed rail services unlike airlines receive large subsidies. According to the paper, the officials do not take the full costs of energy production for high-speed rail services in an account and that energy efficiency of high-speed rail is based on inaccurate assumptions. Also in the case of air transport, the noise is restricted mainly to the close vicinity of airports.
ERA claims that further airport development is needed to satisfy future demand and prevent possible delays in flights. They also suggest a single source for the security legislation since nowadays it comes from both supranational and national aviation authorities. There is also a need for the simplification of aircraft certification. The paper suggests the introduction of an EU aircraft register so that an aircraft once registered in one member state would be allowed to all the EU member states.
According to Mike Ambrose safety of the air transport would improve if experts together from across the EU would cooperate on the investigation of air accidents. For that reason, he suggests the creation of a single EU air accident investigation bureau. The industry players also object that if they are to compensate passengers for things that are outside an operator’s control it will inevitably increase the cost to all other passengers. According to the industry players, it could endanger Europe’s worldwide competitiveness.
