As if on cue to support the previous blog post, Eurocontrol has just celebrated 10 years of the Reduced Vertical Separation Minimum (RVSM) programme which went live at 01:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on January 24, 2002. For a number of reasons this was a truly significant moment for air traffic management, not least because 6,000 air traffic controllers in 41 States opened up 6 new levels of airspace all at once.

This was the first big step to a more efficient use of airspace that engineers are tweaking today. The programme halved the amount of airspace required between aircraft from 2000ft to 1000ft which increased the number of flight levels from 7 to 13. The results? Aircraft delays were cut by one third and Europe’s upper airspace capacity increased by 25%. Most importantly it also reduced greenhouse gas emissions. In the flick of a switch to RVSM, the programme reduced carbon emissions by 1% across the entire airspace it stretched to. While 1% never sounds all that grand, it was equivalent to 1 million tonnes of carbon emissions in 2002 alone.

EUROCONTROL