SESAR and the environment

SESAR's mission is to build the future air traffic management system, able to cope with an expected doubling of flights in Europe by 2020. This new system does not only have to cater for safety, efficiency and capacity of air transport, but it also needs to allow for a sustainable growth. The future of air traffic management needs to be green. It is the societal responsibility of the aviation industry to make sure that we can diminish the environmental impact of air transport which currently accounts for about three per cent of total EU greenhouse gas emissions. One of the priorities of SESAR is to enable the reduction of the environmental impact per flight by ten per cent. We have already demonstrated that by using existing technologies more efficiently and by introducing greener procedures, emission reductions of up to two per cent can be achieved.