Look in the text and find this information as quickly as possible:
1. When will Europe’s skies become “full”?
2. How many people died in the Lake Constance crash?
3. How many flights does Eurocontrol coordinate every day?
4. How many flights will there be in Europe by 2020?
5. What is the new minimum height distance between aircraft?
6. How many planes are in the sky over Europe at any time of the day?
7. How many people are these planes carrying?
8. What will the increase in the number of flights over Ukraine be?
Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2004
Taken from the News
section in
www.onestopenglish.com
Safety fears over
Europe’s busy
skies
Every day there are more and
more budget aircraft flying over
Europe. But these cheap flights are
causing a real problem for air traffic
controllers. The skies above
Europe are becoming more and
more congested. If the number of
flights continues to increase,
Europe’s skies will become “full” in
just over ten years time. Current air
traffic control systems will not be
able to handle so many aircraft.
Many people are worried about the
safety of Europe’s crowded skies.
Two years ago two planes crashed
over Lake Constance in Germany
and 71 people died. The official
report on the accident will probably
say that a mistake by air traffic
control caused the crash.
An air traffic control agency in
Brussels called Eurocontrol
coordinates all the take-off and
landing times in 33 European
countries. Every 24 hours,
Eurocontrol looks after 29,000
flights. Air travel decreased after
September 11 2001, but
Eurocontrol says that the amount
of air traffic across Europe will
increase from 8 million flights a
year to 16 million flights a year
by 2020.
A few years ago the minimum
height distance between aircraft
in the sky was 2,000 feet. It is
now just 1,000 feet because of
the large number of flights. At
any time of the day there are
3,500 aircraft flying over
Europe, carrying about 400,000
people. Budget airlines operate
10% of these flights. Some
experts are worried that a lot of
new budget airlines will come
from east European countries
where the quality of air traffic
control is not so good.
A large number of companies
have entered the budget
airlines market, including nine
budget airlines in Germany
alone. Next month a new
Hungarian airline, Wizz, will
start operating flights from
Luton in England to Budapest
and to Katowice in Poland. The
forecast is that there will be an
increase in flights of 3% in
Britain and 2.9% in France, but
flights over Ukraine will
increase by 7%, over Belarus
by 5.5%, over Turkey by 5.9%
and over Bulgaria by 5%.
Eurocontrol believes that six
countries have poor safety
management. One problem is
that European Union laws allow
workers to move to other countries
to get better pay. Some people
believe that many air traffic
controllers will move from east
European countries to west
European countries because pay is
higher in Western Europe. Air-
traffic control in Eastern Europe
could have more problems
because of this.
Swiss air traffic control said last
week that there were four near-
misses in its airspace in April
alone. According to a Swiss
newspaper, there was a near-miss
between an Iberia passenger plane
and a business jet over Zurich. In
the Lake Constance crash a DHL
freight aircraft crashed into a
charter flight full of Russian
schoolchildren. The official report
on the accident will probably say
that the crash was the fault of an
air traffic controller called Peter
Nielsen. A Russian father who lost
his wife and two children in the
crash murdered Mr Nielsen in
February.
After 16 years without any deaths,
the Lake Constance crash was the
third fatal accident in three years
that happened because of
mistakes by air traffic control.
Eurocontrol says it is very worried
about this.
The Guardian Weekly Andrew Clark
Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2004
Taken from the News
section in
www.onestopenglish.com
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