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France-Swiss FAB

Countries Involved: France - Switzerland

History of the process

April 2004 : the European Single Sky texts are officialy voted by the european instituions. This triggered the obligation for each ANSP to create FAB before 2009. DSNA (French ANSP) and Skyguide (the swiss one) decided to launch a feasability study for the creation of a FAB between the two countries.

January 2005 : the first meeting launched by the two ANSPs. Working Groups are created and the feasability objectives are settled:
- Multi ANSPs – Multi ACCs cooperative framework
- Upper and lower airspace global airspace enveloppe
- ANSP to ANSP « full scope » cooperation
- Bottom-up involvement of operational & technical experts
- Involvement of military authorities , both at expert and steering level
- Involvement of unions both through consultation and expertise
- Cost-benefit analysis contracted to external expertise
Febuary 2006 : the conclusions of the feasability study are positive : the creation of a FAB between France an Swiss will bring improvements for the airline espacially in the flight efficiency and in delay reductions. The benefits of the FAB creation will be mainly on a operational level. These benefits of cooperation are likely to be modest in the short term, but could rise in the long term as replacement of major systems and infrastructure could be coordinated. Costs reduction are also likely to be modest. Concerning the unit rate, the decision was not to impose a single rate over the FAB but to try to make the two unit rates ( franc hand swiss) converge to the same level ( i twas expected a great reeduction of the swis one and an light increase of the french one).

October 2006 : A new agreement is signed between DSNA and the french unions leading to the will of merging the french-swiss project to the Central FAB. This would end to the creation of a central FAB including France, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg, belgia, the Netherlands and Maastricht control center.

Union involvement connected with the bottom-up approach.

during the feasabililty study of the FAB between France and Swiss the recommandation from the Palermo conference have been respected : the unions have been deeply involved in the process espacially in each working group in order to respect the objectives of the study.

For the central FAB, as it is quite new, nothing has been settled yet : the french agreement says that the bottom-up approach will be respected and that tree working groups will be created (an operational one, a technical one and one related with safety subjects). It is also said that the conclusions of the Palermo conference will be take in account and that the unions will be involed, even if we don't know yet in which level.
However, the involvment of two major ANSP (DSNA and DFS) in a single FAB will probably rise lots of problems in the developpement of the project. As a matter of fact, DSNA and DFS have two opposite points of view regarding the aims of a contoll service provider : DFS is already involved in a competitive management whereas DSNA wants to promote public service first.